by Kieran Griffith

For a description of the mission, please see my other entry.

The Lunar Rover is built on the chassis of the lunar rover from the Airfix Astronauts set. A lot of bits were added on to it, however, including seats and control panel from a toy Lunar Rover from Hotwheels. The astronauts were from the same Hotwheels set but were modified. They decided the scale of the diorama at 1/96. The Inflatable Habitat is two pill jars attached end to end and taped together, then surrounded with a layer of tin foil to give it the look of being shrouded in micrometeroid shielding. (The deflated habitat is similar at both ends to the inflated habitat but obviously much smaller and shorter, also with tin-foil wrapped around a small pill canister). Quite a few buttons were used for the landing pads. The decals on the inflatable habitat are all made on my computer depicting Chinese and Indian ministry logos (I would be interested if anyone knows what the Chinese characters on the inflatable habitat mean?).

The base itself is recycled from a model of the Mir 2 I made earlier. This model was pretty much destroyed when I moved home so the base was kind of an orphan. The Lunar surface is made up of paper-mache and has several hundred foot prints. Real rocks were glued in place and the surface was given a spray of gray primer.

The whole model - both entries - was a lot of fun making and I got rid of some junk in the process.

Image: First steps

Image:Habitat is now inflated

Image: Planting the flags

Image: Exploring the immediate area

Image: Another look at the 'nauts