Rocinante : Introduction

The Rocinante is the name of the ship from the Sci-Fi series, The Expanse. After three seasons on Syfy network, it was cancelled and in true Sci-Fi resurrection, the fans convinced Amazon Prime to purchase the rights to the series and continue it. It is slated to continue into season 4 in December, for North America.

The Rocinante, or Roci as it’s crew affectionately refer to her, is a Corvette-class light frigate with multiple roles, such as torpedo bomber and boarding party insertion. Originally commissioned as the MCRN (Martian Congressional Republic Navy) Tachi (ECF 270), the ship was stationed onboard the MCRN Battleship Donnager. She was rechristened by James Holden after he and his crew used her to escape from the Donnager. This is a literary reference to “Rocinante,” Don Quixote‘s horse. For the sake of clarification, “rocín” means “work horse” and “ante” means “before” or “previously”. Thus, “Rocinante” means “previously a work horse.”

A friend of mine knew that I liked to make models and sent me the plans for the Roci… a paper model. “Paper model? How hard can that be?”

Turns out, really hard. Not just because of the sizes of the pieces, but because you have to pay particular attention to paper, glue, cutting, sizing, thickness of paper or how it folds, and a whole bunch of other stuff I’d never even considered.

This is my build journal of this albeit, a little later than actually made, started back in December of 2018.