SCALE MODEL NEWS

THE US LAUNCHED ITS FIRST successful artificial satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. By February 1, it was in orbit, becoming the third satellite, after the Soviet Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2. Mat Irvine: Scale model companies of the time were not slow to celebrate the success of Explorer 1. Most  featured the satellite together with its launch vehicle, a modified Redstone rocket generally known by the name Jupiter-C. More correctly it was known as the Juno 1, a Jupiter-C modified by adding a fourth stage. Only one model company produced Explorer 1 as a stand-alone kit. This was ITC (The Ideal Toy Company) which went for 1:6 scale, a kit that has been reissued in recent years by Glencoe Models. For many years, the ITC Explorer 1 remained one of only three kits of uncrewed satellites. The other two were Explorer 18, and Vanguard 1, which had been intended to be the first US satellite in space. Even though a few more satellite models have been released since those early days, the...

  THIS MODEL IS BASED ON AN ORIGINAL ADAMS KIT that dates back to 1958, the year that the Vanguard rocket sent a small satellite into orbit.   Mat Irvine: The 1:76 scale kit consists of the sleek Vanguard launch rocket, the launch pad and service tower. To these, add four figures. The rocket is the simplest section, consisting of first, second and third stages, each with engine bell detail. The third-stage section can be separated, with a same-scale Vanguard satellite on top, to sit under the nose cone. There were 11 Vanguards produced, though only three were successful in launching satellites. The decal sheet provides markings for six of these (actually seven, as two are identical) detailed in accompanying diagrams. The rocket itself is simple in construction, but the launcher setup has far more parts. It is in two sections, the launch pad and service tower. The original Adams kit had these parts moulded in yellow, which is fine for the pad, but the tower should be painted a...

PROJECT VANGUARD WAS THE FIRST US space launch programme. Now Round 2 has released the 1958 Hawk kit of this most important pioneer of spaceflight’s early years. Mat Irvine:  First a declaration - I was consultant on the reissue of this 67 year-old kit, and wrote reference notes for the instruction sheet. Space kits can be split into three basic types - launch rockets, crewed spacecraft, and uncrewed satellites. Until my book  Creating Space  was published in 2002, available kits for the first and second categories were pretty numerous (comparatively, as I am not talking aircraft, tanks or cars here), but the number for the third was easy to remember. There were just three, one of these being this 1958 release, the Hawk Project Vanguard Satellite.  The new box was created in part by digitally scanning my original Hawk box top ( below, upper ). In the words of Round 2, the company that owns the Hawk brand, “This classic kit from the Hawk models tooling vault presents ...