Dragon 1:72 Mercury-Redstone MR-4/Liberty Bell 7

[GordonD]

My review of this kit is here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234964876-redstone-rocket-with-mercury-spacecraft/

For reasons I explained there, I had to build this as Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 and not Al Shepard's earlier Freedom 7.

The build was fairly straightforward; the most difficult part was the escape tower, which is a little on the fiddly side, I started with the vertical struts, tied them together at the top with the rocket motor, then added the cross-bracing afterwards. When I had finished I discovered that the rocket motor has an unfortunate lean but it doesn't show up in the photographs...so far as I can tell.

Overall view of the vehicle. I didn't like how the steering vanes on the inner side of the fins, in the rocket exhaust stream, balanced on the projection on top of the stand so I added one of the two smaller stands included in the box so the rocket would sit flat.

Closer view of the upper part of the rocket and capsule. The chequered stripes are supplied as a decal (though not the black band around the bottom.)

Close-up of the capsule. Dragon do supply a decal for the Liberty Bell 7 name, but not the painted crack; however this was relatively easy to create with some spare white decal.

And finally, just to show how far US space technology advanced in eight years, here is the Mercury/Redstone compared with the Apollo 11 CSM and LM to the same scale:

Grissom's flight took place on 21 July 1961. Eight years later, minus one day, Eagle landed on the Moon.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

That's excellent!

Just stop showing me space stuff! You know how easily I get obsessed!