Expanding the Donut

My post last week about our ‘octo-donut’ colony base seems to have been pretty popular, judging by the stats on the blog and the Facebook feed. As mentioned, it needed some connecting frames to complete the construction, which duly arrived last week. Please excuse the less-than-perfect photos, I finished a long photo session yesterday afternoon, put all of the kit away and forgot to take these, so I had to whip out my phone to do them in dodgy light instead !

The basic open connecting frame fits between two building parts and basically just neatens up and hides the join, like this:

There are two other frames that are intended to fit over the end of any building to terminate it – one piece has a door in (that matches the external door in one of the two corner buildings shown last week), the other is a blank end with a bit of detail to liven it up.

Along with these were several new parts to the base, shown below:

Basic module, used as a habitation unit, laboratory etc. No doors, two identical pairs of windows either side:

Module with entrance door, the extended entrance module could easily be a decontamination airlock:

Garage/store-room module with large roll-up door:

With the addition of these extra modules, the octo-donut suddenly becomes a lot more flexible (and the name octo-donut increasingly more inaccurate, since the parts will make up much more than a simple octagonal base). For example, two of the new modules make a larger enclosed base with airlock and vehicle garage:

Or you could just add one straight module and use the end frame pieces to make an open base with the entrance in the middle:

And of course each individual module can be used to make a stand-alone building using the end frames:

Or two modules together make a simple garage plus workshop unit:

The possibilities, if not limitless, are certainly extensive. I’ve thought of several sitting here typing up this post, so I’m sure you can think of more. And the possibilities will grow further when we add three- and four-way junctions (T and + shaped) to the modules.