Millennium Falcon Nav Console Discovery

Well I'll be goddamned.... Just when you think you know it all, you make new discoveries.

I was casually scrolling through NASA's facebook page, like you do, and this photo from a Skylab mission popped up.

I thought to myself, "haha oh cool, that panel looks kinda like the Nav Console in the Millennium Falcon"

so I started searching for more images from Skylab, and lo and behold, I find...

it's basically an exact match, from the foot panel, to the shelf to some of the greebles on the side

how cool is that?!?

there's further proof in JW Rinzler's Blueprints book, which shows a drawing of the Navicomputer that always baffled me. It has all these extra switches and this weird truncated angle on the left hand of the console that I couldn't figure out. Well, if you look at the Skylab console, same switches, and a same truncated angle.

now to figure out if it's just a really cool replica of the console, put in by Roger Christian and the set dressers, or if it's really a console from NASA, maybe a ground based training model, that was redressed to fit the part?

Just messing around today, putting this together to maybe hang on my wall. Ordered myself a T-shirt anyway. 

Well this happened

A while ago, but damn what an experience! Huge Unbelievable thanks to Greg Dietrich and the team.

X-Wing

Some dreams I've had since I was an actual child came true this year, in more ways than one. I've been planning how to write about those experiences, and do justice to the amazing people who brought me there.

But in the meantime, what do I do to celebrate? Start all new projects!

I present to you a photomatched study of the Full-Scale X-Wing. The props in the photos below are from A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, respectively. The geometry matches across all three movies. Either the prop is actually the same or it followed the same blueprints between movies. My gut says that the prop for A New Hope was scrapped and rebuilt with the same blueprints on Empire, which is how the full-scale Falcon was built. Then that full-scale X-wing was reused on Return of the Jedi. In one of the photos an X-wing that is only built from the nose forward is visible, which may have also been a prop in Echo Base on Empire.

Millennium Falcon Interior (Empire Strikes Back set)

Here we go down another rabbit hole. Well... at least this rabbit hole has a lot more behind the scenes photos than the A New Hope version...

Everything built based on blueprints and perspective matched photos... wish me luck!

update with dirty dishes....

Han and Chewie, intergalactic slobs.

that bowl on the right has been there since A New Hope at least...

here's a quiet little update

May the 4th be With You

Sometime in 2010 I found a copy of the blueprints used to construct the original Millennium Falcon cockpit. They were for sale in a packet from Ballantine books for the staggering sum of $19. The packet was published the same year as the original movie and I couldn't believe no one had used them to build anything since then. I had recently downloaded a copy of Sketchup and, initially just to learn the program, I imported scans of the drawings and got to work.

After I made some rough progress I posted my build on the Replica Prop Forum, with a little bit of embarrassment that my project was merely virtual. But people took interest.

In particular Greg Dietrich reached out to me with crazy dream of building in real life what I was doing virtually.

Smash cut to eight years later, we've got a write up on Wired...

https://www.wired.com/story/fan-building-millennium-falcon/

Solo Falcon Comparison (Stay Tuned...)

Never before seen areas of the Falcon

Well well well, what do we have here.

I have to say I'm loving this.

As far as I can tell, this is the layout of the movie set with the added captains quarters and cape room.

 speaking of never before seen, I love this...

I've always wanted to see someone actually in that bunk over the couches, and today I finally get to.

Brutalist Beasts of Tatooine (part 2)