posted 06-16-2011 05:19 AM               

Fast forward to the present day. I had an almost complete Monogram shuttle stack sitting in my stash and I wanted to do something unique with it, but didn't necessarily want to do another NASA shuttle. So I decided to build a model of Moonraker 6 from the film in launch configuration. It took me many hours to build and paint, but I was very happy with the results when I finished it last month.

The majority of the work involved making the model look less like a real shuttle and more like... well a model. I think I succeeded rather well with my results. But I have to say, I am NEVER going to sand another rough Monogram ET smooth ever again as when I was done with getting the foam texture off of it, I looked like I had a massive cocaine binge from all the white residue on me.

I am showcasing this here because to me, it is representative of what the shuttle meant to the popular culture of our world back in the late 1970s, how space travel could become routine with the shuttle and even a British Secret Agent could fly into orbit if the job called for him to do so. How the shuttle was perceived in science fiction is as much a part of its history as the space flights.

posted 06-16-2011 07:49 PM               

As a child of the Shuttle era, I'm also very attuned to the role the program has played in our popular culture. Moonraker was probably the least plausible Bond premise ever (that's saying a mouthful, I know), but I think it did reflect the optimism and the sense of "This is just the beginning" that the Shuttle engendered in the public at the time.

posted 06-16-2011 07:49 PM               

Funny enough though, when Moonraker 5 launched, it didn't have the laser on the nose. So, did it have a secret port for it under the RCC nose cap? Weird. I suppose Moonraker was indeed the least plausible of the Bond films (is that possible?) but I will say Drax probably had the most thought out idea for taking over the world of any Bond villain in the form of gassing humanity, yet leaving nature intact (better than Stromberg's idea of nuking the world and living underwater when a nuclear winter would kill the oceans just as easily).

As for Richard Kiel, he was in Omaha in early May for a charity screening of "The Spy Who Loved Me". My model club was invited to put on a display of Bond memorabilia, so that fast tracked my project as I wanted "JAWS" to see it. I had it half built and partially painted several months before, but the film gave me the drive to finish it. I didn't get it finished until the morning of the show and was sweating bullets while it was on display as I didn't want it to get damaged. But it all turned out well in the end.

The base for it is indeed custom. I went to the trophy shop and got a large black varnished wood plaque for it (undecorated, I made the modifications to it myself), like the one I used for the STS-117 Atlantis stack I built for the Strategic Air and Space museum. I drilled two holes in the base and two pieces of 5/32 inch music wire were epoxied to it. The wire slides into a set of 1/4" diameter brass tube shafts mounted in the SRBs. This gave me a nice stiff platform for the whole shuttle stack to rest on and I can take the model off the base for storage and transport. I used smaller diameter wires and tubes for the Atlantis stack and as a result, that model leans ever so slightly. But the Moonraker stays nice and straight due to the stiffer wire I used.

I couldn't come up with a good idea for what to put on the display base, so I white glued on a giant space shutle program patch I got at a space souvanier patch shop near JSC in Houston (I might reapply it though as it does have a couple small bubbles in spots still even after I put some large stiff books over it). For the STS-117 stack, I put on the 117 and Expedition 15 mission patches from A-B Emblems on the base since the model was going in a Clay Anderson exhibit. The smaller patches work rather well for displays like this and to me look better than any display plaque as the model tells the story.