Altaira Rocketry Flying Model Rocket Kit V'ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
"V’GER"
Giant Sentient Spacecraft From Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
- Accurate 1/40,000 Scale(!)
- Excellent as a display model or flying kit.
- 25 Inches Long
- G or H Powered! 600 feet and higher!
- 15 Sheets of Laser-Cut Detail!
- Color Decals
- Full color Instructions
- 29mm Motor Retainer
- Four 30" Parachutes
- Super Strong Clear LEXAN fins act as a display stand!
Altaira Rocketry makes no secret of their love of Star Trek and especially of the film that started the movie franchise over forty years ago- Star Trek: The Motion Picture!
Now comes the 1/40,000 scale (!) model of the twenty-two kilometer sentient vessel V’ger.
Three years after the Enterprise’s five-year mission under Captain James T. Kirk, who is now an Admiral in charge of all of Starfleet’s Operations, a gigantic eight A.U. (744,000,000 mile) diameter cloud crosses into Klingon space and obliterates three of their K’T’inga Battle Cruisers. The cloud is on an intercept course with Earth in less than three days. While the Enterprise has been undergoing a major refit, she is nearly ready and is the only ship within interception range.
Tempered with his old crew and a new Science/First Officer, William Decker, Kirk is ready to head toward the intruder at top speed when the Enterprise’s new engines go into anti-matter imbalance. Luckily, his old friend and original Science/First Officer, Spock, arrives via warp shuttle and assists Chief Engineer Scott in re-balancing the engines and getting the Enterprise off to the cloud at Warp 7.
Once they arrive, the crew takes a very close look at the spacecraft at the center of the cloud (At five-hundred meters altitude!) and is then drawn into the maw of the giant spacecraft and becomes trapped inside. They end up seventeen-kilometers inside the craft, which identifies itself as V’ger and insists it is on a mission to Earth to find its “creator.” Kirk and crew discover that the heart of the apparently sentient machine-craft is a three-hundred year old Voyager VI probe launched from Earth, which eventually was drawn into a black hole, emerging on the far side of the galaxy. The probe is augmented by a machine society and on its journey back to Earth, the probe gains almost infinite knowledge and becomes sentient. Kirk is able to convince the machine that its “creator” is none other than mankind itself by providing the three-hundred year old NASA access codes, and helps V’ger evolve into a new life-form by allowing Decker to merge with the probe and move on to higher dimensions.
Due to an immensely compressed production schedule, one of the great failings of the original film was that it never actually showed V’ger in its entirety, relying instead on the almost microscopic fly-over (Dystraflex) of one of its six sides by the Enterprise for perspective. (The only clue to the six-sided nature of V’ger is given by the very obvious “hexagram with extended wings” image on the main view screen.) It was not until thirty-years later, when the legendary director of the film, Robert Wise, was nearing the end of his life, that Paramount took the unique step of offering him the opportunity of “finishing the movie” with modern techniques.
The saving grace of this operation was that the modern digital effects team was sworn to use only the original story boards and “do nothing that could not have been done in 1979 by either John Dykstra or Douglas Trumbull, the original effects team.” They went so far as to match the film grain! (Legendary Special Effects Master Douglas Trumbull {2001, CE3K} worked mainly with the Enterprise and Special Effects Prodigy John Dykstra {Star Wars} worked with V’ger and the Klingon ships.) The end result is that the original story was completed as it was drawn out and planned to be in 1979.
The great boon of this project was the addition of a six-second image of V’ger on the approach to Earth, dissipating the cloud, an image worth a million-and-one words. With that image in hand, V’ger has been sculpted innumerable times on the internet and even by the desk-top model maker Eaglemoss. A special thanks goes out to my Dayton Support Team, my Padawans and Reed Simon in Michigan for a great editing job!
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/altaira-vger-build-hold-onto-your-hats.167081/
