SCALE MODEL NEWS

This is a 1:100 scale model of the classic Soviet A-Type launcher in its best-known Vostok version, as used to launch Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, on April 4, 1961. This time, the MPC kit comes as a Round 2 re-release. The kit was first issued by MPC way back in 1970, when details of the launch rocket were still relatively new in the West. The design, featuring four tapered strap-on boosters, looked distinctly odd then, especially compared to cylindrical Western launchers. However, the design is now highly familiar - the basic rocket is still used to launch Soyuz and Progress craft to the ISS (International Space Station) and now also by ESA (European Space Agency) as one of its main launchers. The new box (header pic) has a 'Made in USA' label, a sign that at least some kit manufacturing is returning from the Far East. The name ‘Sharik’ ( Russian: 'little sphere' ) is printed under the Vostok title, though this really refers only to the single-seat spherical d...

  An appreciation by Mat Irvine Sir Patrick Moore, creator and presenter of ‘The Sky at Night’, a long-running BBC TV astronomy show, died yesterday, December 9, aged 89. Although Sir Patrick Moore's name is perhaps not automatically associated with scale models, in fact it was through modelling that I first met Patrick Moore more than 40 years ago, when I supplied some spacecraft miniatures to The Sky at Night, a connection that continued on and off until the present day. I don’t think anyone would deny that Patrick was the world’s most famous amateur astronomer, for he was a professional broadcaster, but an amateur astronomer in the true sense of the term. Through The Sky at Night, he inspired countless people, many of whom went on to become professional astronomers, space scientists, or were given a lifetime interest in the subject. It would be difficult to put a figure on these numbers, though I know I was one of them. Patrick in The Sky at Night studio ( above ) around the lat...