the invisible ceiling surrounding our planet...

a photo of a model of a british space ship, from a 1947 architecture magazine. the model was presented in the "future" section of the "britain can make it" exhibition of the same year .

the design was by warnett kennedy, here are some of his ideas:

"the design is neither complete fantasy nor it is immediately practicable. it is, however, a "design fantasy" based on legitimate scientific assumptions... my problem as a designer, was to obtain an esthetically satisfying solution of a technical problem... the spherical shape was the result of the following considerations:...to find a shape designed to travel at low speed in air and at high speed in airless space...the sphere gives the greatest strength-weight ration and resistance to shock... by analogy, all bodies traveling in airless space are spherical...the sphere is one of the basic sculptural elements and one which i find partiuclarly satisfying... the transparent outter shell can be likened to the invisible ceiling surrounding our planet..."