posted 10-04-2013 11:01 AM               

Dragon is famed for its collection of model space rockets, and a new 1/144 scale kit offers something scintillating for space fans. It’s the Space Shuttle Discovery attached to a Boeing 747. In actual fact, this is the very first time Dragon has offered a 1/144 scale kit of the famous Space Shuttle! From 1981 to 2011, these innovative spacecraft were a permanent fixture in the annals of space exploration and the public got used to NASA’s fleet of five manned space vehicles – Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour – regularly blasting into space. In its 30-year operational lifespan, the Space Shuttle fleet performed 135 missions. Until recently there were two NASA Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) in existence, their cabins stripped, fuselages strengthened, engines improved and vertical fins added to their tail wings. They were used to ‘shuttle’ the Shuttle fleet from landing site back to the Kennedy Space Center or to other long-range destinations.

This kit features the Space Shuttle Discovery atop a Boeing 747 SCA. The model combination is crisply detailed and accurately formed. Discovery does have some internal details for modelers to build up. The release of this model kit is topical since the final flight of Discovery occurred not so long ago on April 17, 2012 aboard a Boeing 747 SCA to its last resting place at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. The original Discovery may have retired, but model-makers can enjoy this model for a long time to come!