I built this model for an exposition here at Saudi Aramco commemorating the 30th anniversary of the landing on the moon. A group of us made models of many different spacecraft and aircraft that were considered part of that endeavor. These ranged from the X1 Aircraft > Mercury > Gemini > Apollo > Shuttle. There were some very nice dioramas of the lunar landings as well.
This model is from a Revell 1/24 scale kit manufactured back in the mid 60s. It is a very rare kit and I had it a long time before building it. It is also a little different from the actual spacecraft because it was based on early designs. As a result I did some research to get it as 'right' as possible. The most serious mods were in the cockpit where I had to move the astronauts forward to accommodate the ejection seats which where scratch built. I also added details to the inside doors and gold foil for the heat protection of the aft equipment module. The cockpit is almost totally scratch built since the original kit had very few details there.
The 'space' pictures were made by digitally cutting out the model (Corel PhotoPaint) and superimposing them on pictures of the earth taken in low earth orbit. The model pictures were taken with a Nikon 950C CoolPix digital camera.
A view of the protective shielding on the equipment section.
Click Here for a Hi Res Version of the picture above!
Ed White about to step into space for America's first EVA!
I used scanned images along with several overlays to produce the instruments. Toggle switches and toggle gaurds were also added.
