MOONBASE DIARY

With my trusty Project Sword Official Manual to hand I have encountered my first modelling problem - that quintessential dilemma of scale. There is no real clue in the Manual other than the control box, which you can sort of envisage, since there are some pictured switches. The problem is best summed up by the vehicles we know so well - the Moon Prospector and the Scramble Bug, pictured above in both Century 21 and miniature Spacex plastic/Imai die cast sizes. To re-create the Bug garage module at C21 Bug scale it would need to be really huge - a couple of feet high! I have found this rather cool storage system by Kartell, which could work, but they are hellishly expensive and the door slides rather than lowers. Similarly a C21 scale Prospector would require a ginormous living module (to its left on the Manual picture). All just too darn big for me to work with - I can't imagine the proposed C21 toy would have been at this scale either, child-squashingly massive in a box several feet wide and deep! The astronauts compound the issue too. To illustrate this I have placed an LP silver astronaut - the C21 scale (compare with the Bug driver) - against a mini yellow crawler with driver - the miniature Spacex scale. You can see that the LP astronaut would need a giant moonbase! So, weighing all this up I have opted for the Spacex scale Prospector and Bug and therefore a much smaller, more manageable and affordable model base. Phew!

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PS. Mini Prospector customised and donated to me by the mighty WOTAN. More on this to follow!