Monsanto House Interior

Some time ago I created a SketchUp model of the Monsanto House of the Future. Well now I've added some interior elements to the model home--including a model family. Oh, and Walt has dropped by to welcome the family to this fantastic home.

I still have much more work left to do to this model, but who doesn't like seeing a work in progress?

The Thrill of it All

I thought that I had posted this image some time ago, but I guess not. This is the exterior of the house used in the 1963 Doris Day James Garner comedy "The Thrill of it All." Doris is an overachieving housewife with too much time on her hands and Garner is her doctor husband who wants to keep his wife at home. When Doris finds herself the star of soap commercials her fame is too much for Garner. The films most memorable moment comes when Garner drives his sports car through the carport only to end up in a swimming pool, courtesy of the soap company.

For this film a new front door was relocated to the side of the house, the the lower level windows were modernized and the wing over the carport was added.

The house was originally built for the Deanna Durbin film "Nice Girl?" in 1941. In the film her father was known as Professor Dana, so the official name of the house is the Dana house.

For the television series "Desperate Housewives" this became the home of Lynette Scavo, with a few modification such as a garage door covering the carport.

Space Station Terra

Here is a model that I created in SketchUp. It is the Disney version of Wernher von Braun's Space Station One. The same design was also used in the original 1955 Rocket to the Moon ride in Tomorrowland. For the Disneyland ride the station was dubbed Space Station Terra.

According to the ride narration Space Station Terra was constructed way back in 1964 and had been in orbit for 22 years. The 1955 version of Tomorrowland was supposed to represent the future year of 1986, the same year that Halley's comet was due to make its next near pass of the Earth. The station was to orbit 1,075 miles over our planet and travel at the speed of 16,000 MPH.

The SketchUp model is scaled to meet the space stations 200 foot diameter. It would have rotated so that centrifugal force could create an artificial gravity inside. A crew of 50 men (sorry, no women in space) would have walked on the inside of the outer rim with their heads pointing up toward the center hub. The three large spokes are elevator shafts.

Making More Dreams

So I haven’t been updating my blog like I should have been. I’ve been pretty busy over the last (oops) years. I can’t believe it’s been that long. And I’d like to report everything that I’ve been working on since. Unfortunately, everything I work on is Top Secret.

I’ve spent most of this time working on a project for Disney’s Shanghai Disneyland. The park has been announced so I can tell that much. That’s it. Two and a half years of work and nothing to show—until it opens. I’ve worked on projects for other big players, mostly planned for foreign countries, but again there is nothing I can tell.

So now, with a little free time, I’m posting some of my personal work. This is the stuff that I do for fun. Hidden behind the ‘Top Secret’ label is Space Station S-1. You’ll have to wait to learn more about it, but I can tell you this much—it has nothing to do with my theme park work. The foreign locations I’ve mentioned are all on this planet.