The first time I saw an asteroid docking bay was in a Ralph McQuarrie painting done for an early Trek movie project. Years later, the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "In A Mirror Darkly", did a great job of bringing the concept to the screen.

Even at 1/1000 scale, I didn't have enough room in my house for the whole asteroid as shown, (and my wife's not that reasonable that she'd allow a big rock in the middle of the living room...) so I just isolated a close-up section of the opening. I started with a 10 1/2 x 13 inch plaque, cut out a 5 x 4 inch oval, and decorated the surface with vacuform pieces from an old Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha kit. I also cut out holes above and below the oval to give depth to the smaller hangars. They were made from 1/16 inch thick styrene stock and engraved gold chrome backings. I attached a 9x12 piece behind the larger plaque to support the docking bay. The interior and exterior structures were also made from 1/16 inch stock. I put nine 5mm LEDs inside, framed with hexagon shaped reflectors and powered by a 9-volt battery. The rock wall interior is made from a single piece of 1/32 inch plastic engraved with shallow lines to simulate the excavated rock walls.

Textured Granite Stone and Smoke Gray paints were used on the asteroid surface. Desert Bisque paint was used on the rock interior. Flat Gray was used on all the dock structures.

The Defiant is the Polar Lights Enterprise kit built mostly straight from the box and painted Gloss Gull Gray.

Another close-up view of this model can be seen in FineScale Modeler's December 2008 reader gallery.

Image: Front/right view

Image: Front/left

Image: Larger image