Von Braun Lunar Lander

Glencoe #5003 1/96

One of a series of designs by the great scientist Wernher Von Braun, part of an entire integrated space program he developed between 1952 and 1954 and published in Colliers Magazine. The Space Age was just starting to be big business by then, and legal arguments over the rights to make models of the concepts kept this particular kit out of production until the early 1990s, when the original molds were acquired by Glencoe Models. The years evidently hadn't been kind to them, however, as this kit had some of the worst alignment I've seen in ages - rather than filing down the the poorly-fitting seam right the way around the long axis of the main structure, I cut down the little plastic location pins and aligned the halves by eye... Fiddly, but it would have been hard not to remove the fine detail on the surfaces with all that sanding down...

More shades of grey, and some spare decals (the little red warnings) borrowed from the Redstone kit. Also spray-painted, and overall I think it turned out rather better than I had a right to expect... Even the little yellow portholes, which looked dreadful until actually mounted, now catch the ambient light and glow quite nicely.

Other Resources:

Galactic Voyager's page on this kit.

NASA's Gallery of Wernher Von Braun's Sketches