Tuesday, August 21, 2007

It's Here!!!


I just found out that our Orion CEV-606 has its very own scaled plastic model, available from Fantastic Plastic! For only $65 you can assemble 56 resin pieces with shiny decals to create a 1:72 scale version of this shuttle replacement. (Oh, by the way, the 606 configuration will be outdated by the time you receive the package in the mail.)

Here’s a blurb from Fantastic Plastic on the design:

In August 2006, NASA officially announced that Lockheed-Martin would be the prime contractor for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), code-named "Orion." As space-watchers had long expected, the Orion vehicle would be "Apollo on steroids," a capsule- based system with mostly disposable components, save for the Command Module, which could be used on multiple missions. The craft was intended to carry four to six crew members and serve as the primary vehicle for a variety of manned missions ranging from low-earth shuttle flights to the International Space Station to eventual trips to the Moon and, ultimately, to Mars.


Hey wait a sec, where's the spacecraft adapter? Man, those guys get no glory.