Object Name: Extreme engineering

Creator: Nikhil Goenka ( Harry Alchemi )

Date:02/13/2009

Summary:

In 1989, the first President George Bush announced his plan to send American astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars. He called the proposed space station ''our critical next step in all our space endeavors.'' It would be a base in the weightlessness of space where big rockets would be assembled and blast off on voyages of exploration: ''a new bridge between the worlds.''

As 16 nations struggle to complete the most challenging engineering project of all time, the station has suddenly become a $100 billion dead end.

So I choose the story to reflect the reach of human intelligence and imagination, how we continue to challenge ourselves to realize the greatest of our dreams vs the pitfalls encountered in realising these dreams.

So the denotation here is the cost value of 100 billion dollar, we can take the string "a new bride between the worlds" as denotation too , with the connation being human imagination and intelligence for the latter case and difficulties faced or pitfalls for the former case.

Relevant News Sources:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E4DA173BF930A35751C0A9629C8B63

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2D91739F93AA35757C0A961948260

Motivation:

The space station is created to reflect the story. THe story revloves around it so the space station has to be an object. And the space shuttle is created to form a relation that the cost of 18 such shuttles ,which itself is a magnificent creation is the cost of this still incomplete project.symbol of human achievment

Description:

When making the objects I looked at lot of models of space shuttles and space station , read a bit about its engineering and gave special attention to details , to make it as real as possible mixed with my imagination.

The design of space station was inspired by not the actual International space station but by the first actual design of a space station proposed by rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun . The design, a wheel like revolving structure was also used in the movie 2001 a space odyssey.
I added a few thigns like the solar panels to it,considering the fact that any satellite or space based object including the ISS(international space station ) has one from which they get energy.


For the shuttle , I used a really simple model of a satellite shuttle rather than the ones used in Apollo missions (the plane liek structure). The satellite shuttle is also based on actual shuttle pics.


Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjPwc42p5-s