1:72 SCALE VOSTOK FROM FRENCH KIT MAKER MACH 2

Mat Irvine looks back:

Although the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight was on April 12, true space fans celebrate the achievement all year round. Well, that’s my excuse for looking at this kit in September!

Cutting Edge 1:144 scale rocket at left, compared with the bigger Mach 2 version. The cosmonaut was borrowed from the Airfix kit.

Other Vostoks

I have already covered the Airfix A-Type Vostok launcher, made to 1:144 scale, the generally accepted size for launch vehicles, and indeed, two of the other A-Type kits - the Apex/AER Moldova and the limited edition Cutting Edge resin release - have been in this scale. But how about a kit that’s twice that scale? 

Mach 2 Vostok from France

This you can now get from the French limited edition kit company Mach 2, under the ‘Lift-Off Serie’ label. Having built this 1:72  kit, I have to say this is really one for the dedicated, as it is not an easy or straightforward build. The kit is in styrene, so will assemble with conventional polystyrene cement, but is produced by limited-edition injection techniques which tend to mean that the mouldings are not up the standard expected from mainstream companies. 

What’s in the box?

More than 100 components make up the kit, though many are duplicate items, such as the 20 main and 16 vernier engines. Most parts needed careful filing to remove mould lines, and when joining the boosters, filling with model putty along seamlines was required, which in turn meant that they needed smoothing and sanding. The instructions indicate the nature of the assemblies, albeit rather simplified, and it helps to have built the smaller Airfix kit previously.

Vostok paint scheme

It takes effort to build this kit, and there are many areas where I had to accept that ‘it was what it was.’ However, when the subassemblies were finally looking reasonable, they were given a base coat of the very good Humbrol Grey acrylic primer, then topped off with Humbrol Matt Sea Grey 27, a shade chosen after the research I had done for the Airfix kit, which revealed that Vostok rockets are not green - as had been maintained for years - but a mid-grey. On this model, the only other colours are at the base of the boosters, which were painted bright silver, representing bare metal. For the best effect, these areas were masked and sprayed with Testors Chrome. Finally, the inside of the engine bells (32 in all) were painted with a 50:50 mix of Humbrol Gloss Ferrari Red 220 and Metallic Antique Bronze 171, which gives a highly realistic red-copper colour. 

Summation

I put a lot of time and effort into this kit, and the final result made it worth the sweat, as it doesn’t look too bad at all, and when compared to a 1:144 scale example (the Cutting Edge resin kit is shown here), it certainly proves that even through adversity, size can count.

Visit Mach 2 here.

AIRFIX VOSTOK ROCKET PART 3 - SPUTNIK OR LUNIK?

Mat Irvine discusses Vostok's background

To finish this three-part appraisal of the reissued Airfix Vostok launcher, it’s worth pointing out that you don’t just get the version that launched the Vostok spacecraft. Because 2011 is the 50th year of humans in space, the kit has been issued with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbital version to the forefront, but other options have included Soyuz and Sputnik - or have they?

The first satellite

First, a bit of background. Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to be launched, on October 4, 1957, and so began the ‘Space Age’. The launcher as a whole, usually called the A-type in the west, or R-7 or Semyorka (‘Seven’) by the Soviets, was based on the SS-6 Sapwood ICBM.

Airfix Vostok, Luna version. 

After World War II

The SS-6 resulted from Cold War enmities, when the USSR (having been our ally during World War II) retreated behind the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’. However, this was not before it shared in the spoils of victory over Germany, sharing with the US much of what had been the V-2 rocket programme headed by Wernher von Braun. Large stockpiles of V-2s and equipment were taken, though von Braun went to the US, later to become architect of the Apollo program.

Soviet scientists had been working on rocketry for decades, and continued to do so, but largely in secret. But whatever their nationality, any rocket scientist or engineer knew that orbiting an artificial satellite was not a case of if it could be done, but when.   

Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, featuring the song IGY. This is a vinyl LP, a well-established format in 1957, having been introduced as early as 1948.

International Geophysical Year

The 1950s were a busy time for aerospace industries around the world, peaking in mid-1957 with the start of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which involved almost all countries. This was time of great expectation for scientific research, including orbiting spacecraft, and was summed up in Donald Fagen’s classic The Nighfly album track, IGY: What a Beautiful World, in which he imagined: “Undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris”, and “Get your ticket to that wheel in space. While there's time”.

OK the last two haven’t happened even now, but 1957 did see the shock Soviet launch of the first artificial satellite. Perhaps Sputnik 1 shouldn’t have been a great surprise, as using military missiles as launch vehicles was already an established idea - instead of a warhead, you replaced it with a satellite, precisely the recipe for Sputnik 1. The Soviets took the SS-6 rocket, consisting of a main core and four tapered strap-on boosters, and placed the Sputnik 1 shroud directly on top. 

Full size Luna-1 mockup. 

No Sputnik from Airfix

And that’s why the Airfix kit doesn’t depict the Sputnik launcher, as the kit supplies the payload shroud atop a second stage, and that wasn’t added until later missions. So, if the kit can’t be built as the Sputnik 1 launcher, can it represent anything else? And fortunately, the answer is: “yes”. It matches the launch configuration of Luna 1 and 2, the first Soviet Moon probes. Consequently the kit now states that it can be built as Vostok, Soyuz, or Luna.

Lunik or Luna?

Incidentally, the first Soviet Moon probes were called ‘Lunik’, but around the ninth probe, the name changed to ‘Luna’, so for simplicity earlier ones have tended to be ‘retro-renamed’ to the Luna name. And let’s not forget the third Airfix option - an early Soyuz launcher. The three-seat Soyuz has been developed a great deal since its flight flight in 1966, and external details have changed considerably, but the kit can be built as a reasonable representation of an early Soyuz launcher.

Soyuz 19, used for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in 1975.

Into the future

2011 marks another development. With the US Space Shuttle approaching its final flight, Russian craft will then be the only means for US astronauts to make space flights for several years to come - not bad for a rocket design that goes back more than half a century! As the saying goes, which must also exist in Russian: “If it ain’t broke...” 

A current-model Soyuz TMA.

Vostok available here.

More on building the Airfix Vostok in Issue 5 of Airfix Model World. Order a back issue here.

Donald Fagen’s album is available at iTunes, where you can also listen to track previews, including IGY. iTunes is a free download for Mac or PC here.

AIRFIX VOSTOK ROCKET PART 2 - IS WHITE RIGHT?

Airfix Vostok launchers built up, with empty tanks (left) and full ones (right).

Mat Irvine solves a question of colour

Last time (article here) I pointed out that whatever colour Vostok space launchers really were, they were not white. However photos have often made them appear partially white, so what was going on?

Super-cold liquid
The truth is that the ‘white’ in published pictures was correct, but it was not paint - instead, it was actually frost. This is because Vostok’s rocket motors used cryogenic fuels, or to be totally accurate, a cryogenic oxidizer in the form of LOX, or liquid oxygen (the ‘fuel’ was the far more mundane liquid kerosene). LOX is cold - very cold** - and once the rocket is fuelled, it chills water vapour in the atmosphere immediately outside the tanks, and ice forms on the metal skin - which of course shows up white!

A real Vostok, almost certainly Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1. Note the icing.

Other rockets too

The same was true for the US Saturn rockets. The first, S-I, stage of the Saturn V used the same fuel-oxidizer combination, but as the rocket was painted mostly white, the LOX icing wasn’t immediately apparent. However, it did show up where it covered black stripes or other details.

Airfix Vostok instructions

For the revamped Airfix Vostok kit, the decision was made to do a section of painting instructions that showed this scheme, explaining briefly why, and giving two options for the final finish - unfuelled all-grey, or the tanked-up frosty look. This has also been emphasised by Mike Trim’s box-art, which shows the rocket at launch.

Paint instructions, drawn by Jonathan Mock, show both schemes.

In Part 3 of this mini-series, I will explain what else you get in the kit and why the options have changed from ‘Sputnik’ to ‘Luna’.

** Note from Mr J - Boiling point for LOX is a decidedly chilly -183°C (-297.4°F). Too cold for snowballs then...

Mat's detailed build of this kit appears in Issue 5 of Airfix Model World, which you can buy online here.

Vostok launcher is available here.

YURI GAGARIN AND THE AIRFIX VOSTOK KIT - MAT IRVINE TALKS KIT UPDATES

Mat Irvine on a question of colour

Further to last week’s report on the Airfix 1:144 scale Vostok kit reissue (see it here) celebrating Yuri Gagarin's famous 1961 flight, as I provided the change of details needed to Airfix, here’s more of an explanation.

Secret Vostok shape

The kit itself was released way back in 1969, when we in the West had only recently found out what this Soviet rocket actually looked like. Although flown as early as 1957 to launch Sputnik 1, it wasn’t until 1965, four years after the Gagarin flight, that the shape was revealed.

The first two Vostok boxes. Bottom is the 1969 original, above is the 1991 version, with my suggested additional wording: ‘Soviet A-Type Launch Vehicle’.

Slimline boosters

Because details were still sketchy even in 1969, the kit was not entirely accurate. To be fair, most of it did come out pretty close, but the main problem was with the four tapered boosters. These were too thin, and made the rocket look sleeker than it actually was. In reality, these boosters are somewhat fatter, making the rocket look more dumpy. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to correct them in this reissue, but everything else has been sorted, including the colour recommendations. 

New box for the Airfix Vostok launcher. Three configurations are included, but the emphasis is on Yuri Gagarin, as 2011 is the 50th anniversary of his flight, and the box features a commemorative sticker. New Airfix space kits have box art by Mike Trim, who also did designs for early Gerry Anderson TV series.

Green rocket

When the full-size mock-up was first seen, it was painted white, and as most US space launchers were white, it was assumed quite naturally that this was correct, and this was the Airfix recommendation too. However, once photos of the real thing appeared - though most were atrocious quality, and if they were in colour, even more atrocious colour - it was apparent the rocket wasn’t white. Instead, it was a dark camouflage colour, almost certainly green. This made sense, as the rocket was adapted from a missile, which tend to be camouflaged. So the paint instruction then became ‘camouflage green’, and this has been in place for a decade or so now. 

Trying to sort out which grey to suggest, using Humbrol’s colour chip book.

Updating the kit

However, given the task by Airfix to update the introduction and colour schemes for this reissue, I looked into the matter further. One rumour was that the ‘green’ is actually grey. However, most images still looked green, a result it seems of colour bias. Most film stock - we are talking traditional film here - has a bias to one section of the spectrum. Ektachrome tended to be biased toward blue, while Kodachrome went the other way, toward orange. Soviet-era film went towards green, and it appears, extremely so. If the rocket WAS grey, this, on the face of it, the most boring of colours, is actually in many ways the most enigmatic and due to a phenomenon known as metamerism, ‘real colour’ can take on various hues depending on many factors, particularly lighting. So you ended up with the grey of the Vostok launchers being referred to as ‘green’ because that’s how they looked in most photographs. It wasn’t until Western observers started to travel to what is now Russia, and were able to see the rockets directly ‘up close’, it was discovered they were painted grey, not green!

Vostok launcher with the other options, Luna and Soyuz. You get two nameplates - one in Cyrillic lettering (as here) and one in Roman script. The completed launcher is in the accepted ‘grey’ - though, depending on your monitor settings, it may still look green!

Shades of grey

That solved one major problem for me, but introduced another - OK it was grey, but what grey? As the kit was Airfix, and the paint section of Airfix’s owner, Hornby, is Humbrol, the paint recommendation had to be, fairly logically, a Humbrol colour. The slight problem was that Humbrol makes 27 shades of grey, (28 if you include primer), so which shade should I recommend? After a lot of head-scratching, I first ended up with a shortlist of ten, then whittled it down to either 126 US Medium Grey or 156 Dark Camouflage Grey. I was tending towards the former, but then realised that it was close to 27 Matt Sea Grey, which had a clear advantage - it was available not only in Humbrol’s classic tinlet, but also in a spray can. So to make everything easy, the choice for the Vostok, and any similar Russian/Soviet launcher, is Humbrol 27 Matt Sea Grey.

So the rocket is grey - but it can also be white… More on that next time!

See Vostok kit here.

See more in my article on building the Airfix Vostok launcher in Airfix Model World, Issue 5. AMW is here. 

AIRFIX VOSTOK 1 - CLASSIC KIT TO CELEBRATE FIRST MAN IN SPACE, YURI GAGARIN

SMN report

Last week’s 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight - 12 April 1961 - had Mat Irvine looking at the well-produced magabook Space published at the same time. So now let’s have a look at the Airfix reissue of Vostok 1, the rocket that blasted the 27-year old cosmonaut Gagarin into his 108 minute orbital flight, and a certain place in the history books.

Original Vostok box art from Roy Cross

The original Airfix 1:144 Vostok kit has been around a long time, and as you can see from the pic, the splendid box art was from the talented brush of ace artist Roy Cross. The new art is less exciting, that’s for sure (note the James May and Roy Cross interview link below) but looks clean and wholesome, so we won’t complain.

What’s in the box?

As for the kit, the assembled Vostok 1 measures 245 mm (9.6 in) high, and 65 mm (2.6 in) from fin to fin across the base - and talking of bases, you get a neat rectangular pad to sit the rocket on, plus extra parts to make other launch configurations, should you wish. A very useful display touch is the inclusion of a small cosmonaut figure some 12 mm (0.5 in) tall, to give the whole thing a touch of life and a sense of scale. In all, the kit has 102 components, and to mark what was a momentous feat, every space model fan should have one.

Information downloads from Airfix

The Airfix website (link below) is worth a visit for a useful extra, and that’s a pair of downloadable pdfs featuring precise line art with full paint and finish information. A reduced size version of one of these is shown above. Nice one, Airfix.

Vostok capsule

This pic shows a Vostok information graphic, created by artist and newspage designer Dancsak Andras. I’ve included it for some background info, plus a thoughtful “hmmm...”, as creating similar news graphics was the meat-and-potatoes of this writer’s first job, at the London Observer newspaper, rather a long time ago!

Airfix space kits are available here.

Useful colour scheme download pdfs here.

Visit Dancsak Andras here. 

James May of BBC Top Gear interviews Roy Cross here. Warning - the video is blurrily lo-res, but worth a look anyway!

CELEBRATING 39 YEARS OF A DISTANT GOLF SHOT

Report by Mat Irvine
Yesterday in 1971 astronaut Alan Shepard Jr performed a sports manoeuvre that has since become a staple pub-quiz question, usually along the lines of: “What is the farthest a golf ball has ever travelled?”. For Shepard was commander of the Apollo 14 Moon mission, and, as a golf fanatic, took a golf club and several golf balls on the journey.

In fact, Alan Shepard didn’t use a whole golf club, just the head of a Number 6 iron, which he attached to the end of one of the mission’s soil sampling scoops. Then he plucked the ball from a spacesuit pocket, dropped it on to the lunar surface and hit the ball - albeit in rather ungainly fashion, as the stiffish suit allowed only one arm to be used for the purpose. It was probably not the ‘longest’ drive ever, but was certainly the ‘farthest’ in the sense that the drive was some 385,000 km (239,000 miles) from planet Earth! Besides the publicity exercise, the shot did have some scientific merit in showing ball behaviour in an airless, one-sixth gravity environment.

The scenario was celebrated some years ago in one of UK-based ReHeat Models’ excellent astronaut figure kits, depicting the actual club-hits-ball moment. ReHeat, which was the brainchild of Mike Holloway, did a number of astronaut figure kits all to 120mm scale, (approximately 1:15), and made from resin. Others included Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok ejector seat, both Apollo 11 astronauts, and John Glenn.

Unfortunately ReHeat is no longer making these astronauts, but the kits are well worth looking out for on web-based auction sites.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1 My assembled and painted ReHeat Models astronaut.
2 Parts laid out.
3 Shepard working on the Moon.
4 A video frame-grab of the actual stroke.

LUNOKHOD MOON LANDER - THE LITTLE ROVER THAT COULD

Mat Irvine reports
Today is the 37th anniversary of the second - and last - landing on the Moon by a Soviet automated rover, the eight-wheel Lunokhod 2, taken to the lunar surface by the Luna 21 carrier vehicle.

Following the Lunokhod 1 that landed on November 17, 1970, Lunokhod 2 performed even better, sending back more than 80,000 TV images and travelling nearly 37 km (23 miles) over a period of some four months, until it stopped working. The precise reason for this has never really been determined, but it’s thought that either moon dust covered the radiators and it overheated, or perhaps it fell into a crater - or both.

The Lunokhods (Russian for 'Moonwalker') are arguably the most delightful-looking spacecraft ever designed, fact or fiction. They actually look more as if they were created by Rowland Emett (famed for his whimsical creations) than as working scientific equipment. A Lunokhod would make a great model kit, and although none has appeared to date, there is the terrific battery-powered toy I show here, from the Russian Ogonjek company.

I’d heard rumours of a Lunokhod model kit, and as Ogonjek made kits of Soyuz and Vostok among others, it seemed perfectly feasible - but no one had ever seen one. Then a photo of the box was found, but there were still no details. Finally I managed to get my hands on the real thing, courtesy Tony James of Comet Miniatures in London. The Ogonjek Lunokhod is not a kit, but a toy, and comes with that classic ‘Russian toy’ look. It is motorised (six C-size batteries), and is ‘remote controlled’ via a stout cable - forget radio control!

The original Lunokhod 2 is of course still on the Moon, but it is now officially owned by Richard Garriott, the computer games developer and space tourist, and son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott. Richard purchased Lunokhod 2 and Luna 21 in the 1993 Sotheby’s Soviet Space Sale in New York.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1 A Soviet-era drawing showing how a Lunokhod sat atop its Luna carrier vehicle, before rolling down a long ramp.
2 A full-size Lunokhod replica on display at the Cosmosphere and Space Center in Kansas.
3, 4, 5 The Ogonjek Lunokhod, the name applied in both Russian and English, one on each side. The box is a typically Russian item with very basic colours, made from thick, but not exactly sturdy, card.

Visit Comet Miniatures here.

Visit the Cosmosphere here.

Look at Rowland Emett's work here.

SUPERB HAND-BUILT SPACE MODEL AUCTION

For model makers, Russian space equipment is not especially well provided for, but for collectors it’s a different story, with a host of interesting items that come on sale from time to time. For example, the canine cosmonaut Laika’s trip to space in 1957 was celebrated with her image on sorts of mementos, including a cigarette brand named after her (top picture).

For well-heeled model fans, a superb hand-crafted spacecraft to 1:25 scale has featured in a Live Auctioneers sale (middle picture). As the description puts it: “Manufactured by the NPO Lavochkin Institute, in 7 x 13 x 16 inch custom wooden carrying case. An exquisitely executed model of the first manned spacecraft, presented to a major rocket designer for a 70th Anniversary by the Chief Constructor of Rocket Engines Valentin Glushko. Includes extraordinarily delicate detail. Few surface flaws, missing one thin antenna, still very fine. Beautifully made and a worthwhile addition to any fine model collection. A rare opportunity to purchase a classic space model. This model last sold at Christie's New York for over $16,000 USD in 2001”.

This time round, the model fetched £18,000 USD (£10,980 GBP), and in a recession too!

Talking of space exploits, today’s the day in 1960 that the USSR’s Sputnik 5 (bottom), loaded with a space zoo that included the dogs Belka and Strelka, a pair of rats, 40 mice and a number of plants, left orbit after little more than 21 hours in space. Importantly, they were returned to Earth safely, unlike Laika, who died when her air supply ran out, but not before she had proved that a mammal could survive the stresses of takeoff and weightlessness.


Visit Live Auctioneers here.