I was looking for some satellite models on the web, and I noticed NASA have a large repository http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/3d_resources/models.html
Clicked on a random model to see it better… (Magellan, in this case) and found that the creators of the model are NASA employees and they use Blender to make some of these models.
I just think this is really cool!
Never would have suspected NASA.
I chat regularly with them over at spacefellowship.com
most have great dreams and no one will pay for them.
My ideas are even further out there, but insane as they are, Zeropto looks doable.
Some used blender before I got there,
however I plaster blender everywhere anyone wants to do anything on the cheap.
I just took a look at Deep Space 1, another NASA model made in Blender. Interesting way of organizing a model. There is a cube called root, set to wire, and everything else is a child of root. The parts of the model are called by their material: gold foil, silver foil, black crinkle, etc. rather than the satellite part name. The zip file contained the textures for a nice Blender Internal render.
Very cool, with quite liberal usage rules, very similar to CC-BY.