by Brian Hardy
Scale: 1/32
After the discontinuation of the U.S. space program and the shutting down of NASA, Great Britain decided to step up and attempt to take the lead in the growing space race with Red China.
Britain made a unilateral decision outside of the confines of the EU to put a manned spacecraft on Mars by the year 2053. The project was turned over to the Ministry of Defense and the RAF. The Mars spacecraft, Britannia, and the two stage lander, Hurricane II
were built by Whitby-Branson Aerospace. The commander of Hurricane II was Group Captain Reginald "Reg" Urqhart Pimby, First Officer Squadron Leader Archibald 'Archie" R. Moffat, and Flight Lieutenant Michael "Mick" Jones-Davies. The Hurricane II successfully landed on the Martian surface on the 2nd of June, 2053. This diorama represents that glorious occasion .
This 1/32 scale model was built almost entirely of things I found in my local Hobby Lobby. The lower stage and external fuel tanks are acrylic shapes. The main thruster nozzle is an adapter for a cake icing nozzle. The rentry stage, the upper portion, consists of a couple of paper mache boxes. The communication discs are the top and bottom halves of a plastic champagne glass. The pilot's module, re-entry rockets, secondary fuel tanks, and landing gear were taken from two Seaquest models I had lying around. The rest of the parts were from a PT-109 model. I bought the astronaut figures at a local hobby shop and painted them using Vallejo paints. The base is hydrocal soaked paper towels, pebbles from the backyard, and lots of orange Krylon.
Image: Front view
Image: Right/front
Image: Long ladder
Image: Left side
Image: Planting the flag
Image: Backside
Image: Right
Image: Command pod
![[Just Glue It!]](contest_justglueit_banner.jpg)
![[Proudly Sponsored by BLAP! Models]](blap_sponsor_logo.png){kind=logo}
