Is this the most famous ladder in history? ..........

[Stefee]

Hi everyone,

Approximately 600 million people watched Neil Armstrong descend down the ladder on July 21st 1969 including a 12 year old me on a 13 inch CRT Bush TV. This viewing figure was only beaten when a certain Diana Spencer tied the knot with a Charles Windsor some years later.
The Lunar Lander weighed approximately 19000 kg with fuel, provisions and crew and had a designed operational life of 75 hours with very thin sheets of alumunium and Kapton foil between the astronauts and oblivion, very brave men in my opinion.
I have attempted to build LM5 better known as Eagle from Apollo 11 using the Revell 1/48 kit ( ex Dragon? ) which is built pretty much OOB excepting the Kapton foil on the underside of the Ascent Module and the colours which were provided by Paul Fjeld and the Grumman/Northrop History Office. The kit went together well with the gaps around all those spindly legs filled with sprue glue and basically left as is in order to match the moulded in Kapton foil details on the Descent Module. The largest time of the 65 hour build was spent mixing colours, masking, painting and repeat 3 times on the Ascent Stage, a lot of free hand painting was also done. Thoroughly enjoyed this build and feel very happy and proud of the outcome, let me know your thoughts good or bad.
Now to find a reasonably priced Dragon 1/48 Apollo 11 Columbia CSM kit and their 1/72 Apollo Recovery Sikorsky SH-3D with CM and PE hoist cage to complement this and the Revell 1/144 Saturn 5 kit I have yet to build.
Enough waffle and onto the images.

Regards

Stefan.

 

[boatman]

VERY NICE BUILD Stefen looks real very well done indeed sir an yes me an my dad was whachin it all happen at 4 am on that day an i was very excited indeed an i thought great things are goin to happen but no all they have done is waffle about an scrapped the good space shuttle an gone back to the bloomin ole step rocket what a let down
chrisb

 

[outrunner]

Very very nice.

Andy.

 

[Scratchbuilder]

Really good build and history.
Nearly missed my train back to London watching the landing, didn't bother with the wedding....

 

[JR]

Always a first for the Committee , but seeing this they all agreed its


Congratulation Stefen. Love the finish .

 

[Tim Marlow]

That’s great Stefan. A rare subject as well. Sci FI is quite common, but historical space stuff, less so.
PS, I was the only kid in my class of 35 that didn’t see the landing….my mother deemed it too late at night for me to watch

 

[Stefee]

Thank you everyone for the kind words and comments and glad that you appreciate a slightly different subject matter.

 

[Jim R]

That's a great model Stefan. As Tim said we see very few real life space models.
I remember watching the landing in the common room of my hall of residence at university.

 

[minitnkr]

Watched w/SWMBO. The landing was a bit dicey.

 

[Stefee]

Paul you are right, the proposed landing site was strewn with sizable rocks and when they eventually touched down apparently there was 9 seconds of fuel left. Considering your smart phone has many degrees more computing power than the Eagle's systems it beggars belief they got there never mind landed. Hats off and great respect to the astronauts and NASA for achieving the seemingly impossible.

 

[minitnkr]

True "Pilots" are still needed no matter the power of computers. Sully's successful ditch in the Hudson river would have been impossible via computer sim.

 

[Stefee]

True "Pilots" are still needed no matter the power of computers. Sully's successful ditch in the Hudson river would have been impossible via computer sim.

Very very true

 

[Tim Marlow]

If you want computing power , read up on this lady! The Apollo missions wouldn’t have happened with her or her compatriots. They were called “computers“ because they carried out basic computations. The associated film is well worth your time as well.

Katherine Johnson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org