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SCI's Whole Idea is to Mimic the
Lightweight Structure of a Spacecraft

Spacecraft like Voyager were designed taking great pains to minimize weight (well, mass actually) while maximizing strength. SCI's big idea is to take full advantage of this, and incorporate the spacecraft's key design features into the model kits. That way, we too can use very lightweight materials. With the high-resolution laser cutting we employ, those materials can be mostly paper. There are major advantages to using paper (we use a special 100% recycled card stock). One advantage is that we can apply lithography and metal-foil bonding techniques, making sure all the proper colors and details are present in your kit, without your having to paint them in. Another advantage is that the parts can be labeled for your convenience in assembly. The glue is non-toxic, and paper is a relatively easy material to work with. The use of 100% recycled paper is another advantage: look what's become of your discarded phone book! Also, paper products are perfectly suited for delivery by first class mail. The Voyager and Magellan kits come with a high-density styrofoam antenna dish.

To make the image at left, we placed a part from the Voyager kit on our scanner with a picture of Saturn behind it (a picture taken by Voyager, of course!). This way, you can see the level of detail achieved by the laser-cutting process. The part may show up a little smaller than actual size, depending on your browser (and its entire length is not shown). The part folds up into a triangular boom which you can see in in the closeup at right. Its yellow color represents the fiberglass Voyager's boom is made of. This boom's purpose on Voyager is to hold magnetic field sensors out away from the spacecraft. You may see an overall view of this boom in its full length, on an assembled Voyager model. This pretty well sums up how SCI's kits are designed, using key design features from actual spacecraft. The approach also works very well for our model of the Keck Telescope (Hawaii), since its modern mechanical design incorporates strong yet very lightweight structures.

Now the final part of SCI's Big Idea is using the internet to provide Assembly Instructions, Fact Sheets, Presentation Guides, and other information for most of the kits. That way we avoid the expense of printing, stocking, packaging, and shipping a lot of paper. Using the website for this information, there is no practical limit to the number of pages or images we can include. Plus, we can make instant updates, and use lots of color images, and link to information from many other sources.

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