MOONLANDER: SPACE EXPLORATION THE WAY IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

WITH THE LATEST PLANS OF ELON MUSK HITTING THE HEADLINES it seems a good moment to revisit what I have dubbed 'factual futuristic' spacecraft, designs that seemed a good idea at the time, but which were never built.

FLY ME ROUND THE MOON: RETRIEVER ROCKET FROM GLENCOE MODELS

THE 1:72 SCALE RETRIEVER ROCKET is a reissued and reboxed Glencoe Models kit, itself based on one of the Strombecker classic ‘Man in Space’ series.

NAZI V-WEAPONS AT LA COUPOLE ROCKET BASE, NORTHERN FRANCE

IF YOU ARE IN REACH OF Northern France, a trip to the site of a World War II Nazi rocket base could provide some excellent source reference for model projects.

SPACEX BOSS SAYS - MARS HERE WE COME! MEANTIME, HERE’S A FREE MODEL MARS ROCKET

SMN report:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the planet Mars as his long-term goal during a speech on 29 September at the US National Press Club. Already known for its Falcon rockets and Dragon space capsule, SpaceX is to make them reusable. The Falcon 9 will incorporate a descent module at the base, so that it can make a vertical soft landing, while the Dragon (above) will use its emergency-escape rockets as brakes on the journey back from space.

GERMAN MOON ROCKET 'FRIEDE' FROM FANTASTIC PLASTIC

Here’s another fictional space subject from our friends at Fantastic Plastic. It’s a kit of the rocket Friede from the 1929 Fritz Lang movie Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon). As Fantastic Plastic puts the story:

“In 1927, in the wake of his stunning success with his sci-fi opus Metropolis, German director Fritz Lang decided his next movie would be a sprawling silent melodrama based on mankind's first trip to the Moon. To make his movie as technically accurate as possible, Lang enlisted the aid of already-famous spaceflight cheerleader Willy Ley who, in turn, corralled Romanian-born rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth into the project. The centerpiece of Lang's new feature... was the spaceship Friede (named after the movie's titular character), based on the Modell E rocket from Oberth's treatise Die Rakete”.

The movie was not a great success, coming out as a silent flick just as the first sound movies were hitting the screens, but the Friede did influence one very important young space enthusiast: Wernher von Braun, who went on to develop the V-2 rocket and later, the Saturn moonflight program.

The kit is produced to Fantastic’s usual high resin standards, to a scale of 1:288. There are just 11 pieces, which must make it one of the simplest kits around, but none the worse for all that. For anyone with an interest in science fiction and early spaceflight, it’s a must-have for the collection. You don’t have to finish it in bare-metal shades either - as you can see above, Popular Mechanics magazine chose a splendidly garish yellow-orange for this fictional big bird.

The kit is coming in March from Fantastic Plastic at $70.00 USD plus shipping.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1 Original movie poster.
2 Three-view plans for the rocket.
3 Parts of the kit, all 11 of them.
4 Magazine jacket shows the rocket at the launch pad. Incidentally, the movie introduced the idea of the countdown to liftoff, a space first.

Visit Fantastic Plastic here.

MARS PROBE KIT FROM LINDBERG

BY MAT IRVINE

Recent news that the Russians have delayed the launch of their latest Mars probe made me think about a Mars Probe kit from that old-stager of the US model scene, Lindberg.

Though its glory days were many years ago, Lindberg never really went away, though it has certainly had its ups and downs. Currently, a very wide-ranging list includes kits from the original ‘Lindberg Line’, along with companies Lindberg acquired along the way, such as Hawk and IMC.

But if we go back to the 1950s, Lindberg was in at the dawn of the Space Age, with four kits of ‘factual futuristic’ rockets and spacecraft, based on designs from science-luminaries of the time, such as Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley and the space artist Chesley Bonestell. Four kits were issued in 1958: a wheel-shaped Space Station, a Moonship, and two versions of a winged Transport Rocket - one carrying a crewed delta-wing shuttlecraft, the other carrying a satellite.

These kits were reissued in 1970, this time as the Mars Probe series, and again in 1977 as the Star Probe series, though the satellite launcher was absent that time round.

Now, almost 40 years on, the satellite-carrying Mars Probe kit has been reissued. It’s a nice kit of a concept for a Mars-orbit relay satellite, with some parts moulded in clear plastic so you can see the internal parts. There’s a mystery bonus too - the instruction leaflet doesn’t mention it, but you also get a complete winged shuttlecraft from the ‘other’ kit, so that you can build two models if you want - just swap the upper stages over!

This raises an intriguing point - until now, I’d assumed the scale of the two kits to be the same. Lindberg says 1:200, (perhaps taken from the listing in my Creating Space book), but on reflection there would be a vast difference in size between a winged shuttlecraft with crew aboard, and a far smaller satellite - if they were to the same scale, the satellite would have the unlikely diameter of some 46 m (150 ft)! So a rethink of scales is necessary - the shuttle can remain at 1:200 scale, but a satellite scale of 1:32 seems more reasonable.

The pictures show, top to bottom:

1 Original kit from the 1950s.

2 New box 2009.

3 Winged shuttlecraft and satellite, with launcher.

4 Satellite atop launcher. It stands some 330 mm (13 in) high.

You can buy the Lindbergh Mars Probe here, and my Creating Space book here.

Visit Lindberg here.

APOLLO MOON LANDING ANNIVERSARY COMING SOON

We’re only a few weeks away from the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing on July 23, 1969, so if you’re up for making a remembrance model, then now could be the time to get started.

Among the best kits available at present are Revell’s reissues, labelled under the series title, ‘Buzz Aldrin Rocket Hero’. The 1:48 scale Lunar Module and 1:32 scale Apollo capsule are both well-produced, and highly recommendable, as is the 1:144 Saturn V.

When it comes to finishing, for that extra sparkle, it’s worth taking a trip to a museum that has some real-life Moonflight memorabilia on hand - there’s nothing like reproducing details that you’ve actually seen, photographed, maybe even measured, to sprinkle magic dust on a model.

An Apollo capsule (top pictures) is on display at the London Science Museum, so for any Brit model fan, it’s a good excuse to make a visit. Also at the Science Museum is a space gallery, with fascinating stuff on show.

You can also see a model of a British Interplanetary Society (BIS) space capsule study (bottom picture), conceived long before Apollo was even a twinkle in Wernher von Braun’s eye. The BIS is a highly regarded organization that has been on the leading edge of space activities since it was set up in 1933.

Revell space kits are widely available; you can see the range at Revell’s site here.

The BIS can be viewed here, and the London Science Museum is here.