Cardboard Starship #4: Transport part 1

If you look back at the "cardboard starship" tag, you'll see there have been a couple of previous builds... and #3 was never updated. That's because I never finished it. I was unhappy with the foam I'd used to make it, and decided to scrap it. 

That was 5 years ago. 

Now that I'm actually playing Stargrave again, and the next official scenario requires a crashed ship with a 10x4 cargo area that the crew can go into, it's time to build my next cardboard spaceship!

The only requirement for the scenario is the cargo bay, and while I absolutely could just put a box on the table, that's just not my style. I want a full ship that I can use over and over! On the other hand I don't want to go too overboard and make something so big it'll take up the whole table. Grabbing my trusty graph paper, I got to sketching.

 

Here you can see what I came up with. To avoid it looking like a box, I decided it should be, overall, hexagonal. 45 degree angles are easy enough, right? Plus I could make some simple benches running down the length of the cargo bay. At the front, there would be an elevated cockpit, and at the rear an engineering area and the engines. 

With everything all sketched out, I grabbed some cardboard from the recycling bin in the garage, and got measuring. I wanted to minimize the number of cuts I'd need to do and so made sure the cardboard grain was running front to back to make it easier to bend the cardboard to make the 45 degree angle that I'd planned. In hindsight it was maybe not the best decision, but it worked ok. 

 As it felt a little weak, I decided that it could use some bulkheads in the cargo bay, and so added them in as you can see above. Later I found that single thickness cardboard, cut thin like this is also kind of weak, and it buckled on me. 

 

Next I added the flooring to the cargo bay, which was simply the molded plastic of a food tray that had previously contained some peppers from the grocery store. This was hot glued in place. You can't really see it, but a couple of the spots on the trays have writing molded onto them. At this point I decided not to worry about it. I've also begin to block in the engineering compartment, and glued the ship onto a scrap piece of foam for a little extra strength and to give the engines somewhere to sit. 

 

The cockpit and the benches were added next. The middle section of the cargo bay is where the ramps/doors will be, so no benches there. The cockpit was glued together from some cut off bits of cardboard from earlier in the build. Annoyingly it's not quite level, but I doubt anyone else will notice, plus for this scenario at least it's supposed to be a crashed ship anyway. 

The engines came together quickly, largely made from paint and Yukult bottles, embellished with bottle caps and toothpaste caps. The central area is made from a beer can 6 pack ring and a pizza box support, as well as a few other scrap bits from my junk bins. 

More detailing in the next post!