Skylab

NASA launched Skylab in 1973 and at the time I was a college co-op student working at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Marshall was the lead center for Skylab and those were exciting days. Of course, that inspired me to build a model of Skylab.

I chose 1/96th as the scale, since it would result in a reasonably sized finished model, and I could use the Revell Apollo to go with it. The model was based on a large cardboard tube covered in plastic sheet protectors, painted appropriately. The sunshades were made from the same gold mylar used on the real thing. One day I was walking down the hall of a building at MSFC and saw a sheet of this gold foil hanging on the wall. Already a few chunks had been trimmed from the bottom. I told the fellow who owned the office what I planned, and he let me snip enough for this model.

The telescope mount is made of lots of pieces of sheet plastic, and the truss work is steel rod super-glued together. It has held up well for over 25 years, disproving the theory that super glue falls apart after a few years.

I built this model in 1975 and took the photos the same year.