Quote - About the biggest spaceship model I've seen with an actual interior is the Magellan by PoserWorks. Doors are all fully poseable... but comes at a hefty price.

I actually own Magellan :-)

It's a very nice model, but it does not have nearly the detail of Vanguard on the inside.  Most of the rooms are pretty simple textures without the fancy consoles and such that Vanguard is full of...though there are some parts of Vanguard that are not as detailed as I'd like.

I guess story-wise, there are two options:

(1) a single model that is detailed inside and outside.  The trick with this is that you are then limited to the rooms in the ship...for Vanguard, for example, you can't suddenly have a new or different room, because the reader has a strong sense of how the small number of rooms connect.  

(2) a large external model, and then use some the innumerable "science fiction corridor," "science fiction bridge", etc. scenes for interior shots.  The pro to this is that if you decide tomorrow you want an arboretum or a chapel or an engineering bay or whatever, you can do it.  The negative is that the rooms may not have a continuity of style and design, at least not without a lot of work.  This is sort of the Babylon 5/USS Enterprise TV series method - exterior shots, but the reader has no idea where different rooms go.

I'm starting to think that only (2) is going to give me the level of detail I want inside...

I thank you all for your comments so far.