SCALE MODEL NEWS

The International Space Station is the size of a football field and circles the Earth more than 15 times a day. But before the ISS came a range of space station concepts, many of them featured in miniature form. David Jefferis reports: Most of the truly collectible space kits and toys come from the golden age of space exploration, the 1950s and 1960s. Those Space Race decades were periods of intense activity in real-space technical development, and this headline activity was reflected in the wide range of space toys and kits available to buy in model stores. Revell kit Kits with working features were popular, and the tin-can space station, as modelled by Revell ( header, below ) clearly fell into that category. The basically rather plain cylindrical design was brought to life in several ways. The antennas at top and bottom could rotate, and, as depicted in the attractively busy box-art, sections of the outer walls opened up to reveal a detailed interior, with parts that came, in Revel...

SMN Weekender from Mat Irvine: The recent release of the 1:72 scale Fantastic Plastics XSL-01 in resin gives me the opportunity to look back at the kit that started it all - the 1:96 scale XSL-01 from Revell, and its designer, Ellwyn E. Angle. Ellwyn Angle around 1959-60 with both his Revell creations. The sketch below was produced by him for the Lunar Probe Vehicle. Interplanetary travel Ellwyn E. Angle was a rocket engineer who, in the 1940s and 1950s, worked on various advanced projects in the US, including the Bell X-1 and X-5. In 1956, aged around 35, he moved to a new company in Sherman Oaks in California, north of Los Angeles. This outfit - Systems Laboratories Corporation (SLC) - was set up to explore what were termed: 'preliminary designs of basic studies for interplanetary travel'. However, the CEO and co-founder of SLC, John Barnes, also knew the head of Public Relations at Revell Inc, then based in Venice, California, only 26 km (16 miles) away.  XSL-01 and Space S...

SMN report from David Jefferis: SpaceX is the sort of company that brings a smile to the face of many a space buff. Under the leadership of Elon Musk, who set the company up a decade ago in 2002, SpaceX has gone from strength to strength. Right now, SpaceX is aiming to make the first commercial flight to the International Space Station, using its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule combo. And guess what? There’s a model rocket available from SpaceX that you can build and fly. Amazon supply details First things first: the only supplier we know of at the moment is Amazon, and they don’t mail the SpaceX rocket  to all countries, so x-fingers you live in an approved locale. Even so, it’s an interesting item, and at about $30 USD, pretty fairly priced, too. When assembled, the kit measures 580 mm (22.8 in) high, equating to 1:88 scale.  Building the beast Assembly is very simple, and it’s compatible with Estes model rocketry products, which is a high recommendation, as this writer ...