Re: [GZG] Christmas Painting Project

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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 09/01/2011
18:29, Tom B wrote:
> Phil - Can I buy a vowel?
Sure. We're even having a half-price sale on Y this week -- or W if 
you're into Welsh. :-)
> Care to help me out with a reference to some particular books or a TV 
> series? Where's this Lief Ericson (not the explorer from age of 
> dragonboats one assume) come from, or whatever an 'Old Mac' is, or the

> 'Patton' which I assume is not the corpse of a very dead general with 
> a rocket bolted on....?
The SSC/Leif Ericson/ was a design by Matt Jeffries which AMT released 
as a model kit in 1968 or thereabouts, in an attempt to build on the 
success of their /Star Tre/k kits with a range of their own. Didn't seem

to work, as only the first kit (the LE) was ever released, though they 
reissued it years later as an "Interplanetary UFO" in glow-in-the-dark 
plastic, and Round 2 Models have very recently re-released that version.

For details, pictures, etc., look at Winchell Chung's site here:

http://www.projectrho.com/SSC/model.html

A few years later, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were writing /The 
Mote in God's Eye/, set in Pournelle's CoDominium future history in the 
era of the Second Empire of Man, and they decided to use the LE as the 
basis of the heroes' ship, the INSS /MacArthur/ (aka the "Old Mac"), a 
General-class Battlecruiser. Rick Sternbach did a cover painting for the

book showing a modified version of the Lief as the MacArthur, which you 
can also find on Winchell's site. In the book, the Mac's XO is Jack 
Cargill, who is eventually promoted to Captain of the INSS /Patton/, 
which is presumably a sister ship of the Mac.

Recently, a gamer and sculptor by the name of Velbor has come up with 
several ships of similar design as the LE, and they are available in 
resin from Ravenstar Studios. Again, you can see pictures of some of 
them on the above webpage. I'm collecting an Imperial fleet made up of 
these and the Cozmo resin models (yet again see the above link), and 
have written some special rules to simulate the nature of space combat 
in the CD universe. The biggest ship of all in such a fleet, a 
President-class BB, will have to be scratchbuilt as we know from the 
authors that it's basically cylindrical, hence my comments last time 
about using model rocket parts.
> I mean it's not like these are as familiar to me as the Liberator, the

> Millenium Falcon, or the Hot Needle of Inquiry.....
Maybe not to you, Tom, but the SSC and the Leif have a devoted coterie 
of followers on places like starshipmodeller.com. Some people might find

HNoI a bit obscure.... 8-) (I named my SFB Kzinti SCS that after the 
original...)

Phil