Okay, after much consideration of all the feedback ya'll gave on this, I think I shall go with the terrain method. The goal is to make a hollowed cylindar with all sides greebled. Picture a huge spaceship. My angle of attack shall be to make an arc in a paint program (white on black) then import into the TE. There I shall elongate the terrain to have this long arc. Then greeble it with different cubes and other objects Rosemaryr suggested. Then copy it several times to make a cylindar with all sides greebled. I think I'll use a terrain instead of a cylindar object b/c there's a lot of additional effects the TE can do to the terrain. In the freebie section there was a spaceship texture mat which might work with the greebles too, to add finer details. Anyway, if this doesn't work then I'll try other methods mentioned here.

Thanks all! Very helpful. It's really fun/useful to see lots of ideas getting tossed around.