By Kieran Griffith

The Universal Service Block (USB) is, in my opinion, the most powerful space "battlewagon" that has ever been designed by aerospace engineers up to this time. The USB is a Salyut design space station that was built to be maneuverable and capable of changing its orbit.

There were versions with missiles and lasers. I chose to build the missile version since it was lighter and the most maneuverable, capable of hitting targets as high as geosynchronous orbit. Larger than a Blue Gemini and with probably longer endurance, the USB could have dominated space around Earth, destroying anything from satellites to Shuttle Orbiters or Space Station Freedom. Although the Polyus was bigger it was incapable of changing its orbital inclination and its engines were designed for nothing beyond orbital maintenance. The USB would have been serviced by the Buran Shuttle and supported a crew of two for up to seven days.

The Model

The model itself is 100% scratch build in 1/32nd scale. The engines at the back are from 1/200 shuttle kits, the body of the ship itself is a section from a nerf ball bat with cardboard carpet roll holder in the inside and layers of cardboard cotton wool and tin foil on the outside. the cotton wool and tin foil was to give it the look of having an extra thick micro-meteoroid shield. The port holes are made of clear plastic inserted in Bahaman Hot sauce bottle tops. The Hammer and Sickle flag is just printed out in color and stuck on with wood glue. The solar panels are made from sheet styrene but had to be strengthened with stem wire, the undersides are covered with strips of masking tape since I didn't have khaki paint at the time. The Antenna is from a box I got a globe of the world in and the mast is a shuttle robotic arm. The missile canisters themselves are regular 1/2" pipe with the caps made from sections of ping pong balls.

The model was painted by hand with dark green and white to look like the Alamatz station. The base is from an award trophy I found in a dumpster and has a description of the USB, a star, a patch and a 1/32nd scale Cosmonaut from Fondre Miniatures.

Image: Side view

Image: Overall

Image: Rear view

Image: Base