SIM Tech Report #3 - Nova

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This is the third in a series of short versions of the Space In Miniature series called “Tech Reports”.  I am fortunate enough to be able attend the national convention of the International Plastic Modelers Society - USA Branch (IPMS/USA) nearly every year. This event includes a huge model contest and includes a category for ‘real space’ (as opposed to science fiction) models. At the July 2017 convention in Omaha, Nebraska, there was a large rocket on the display table. At first, it appeared that someone built a nice Saturn V. But upon closer inspection it was the proposed Nova variant which would have taken astronauts to the Moon’s surface by essentially landing the entire Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM). This model was initially displayed fully assembled, as seen on the cover of this booklet. But on the next day it was displayed disassembled, as it had frankly seemed a little wobbly. Since the stages were meant to be separated, and you could actually see a lot more of the detail work with it in sections, that made a lot of sense. We soon discovered that master modeler Ben Guenther was the artist behind this impressive model. Ben recently retired from his job as a model maker for NASA’s Langley Research Center. He is known for his amazing scratch built projects such as a Lunakhod and a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle that have appeared at other IPMS/USA conventions. He brought a nice set of albums with the Nova model with annotated photos of how he built it. That inspired me to ask Ben if he would be interested in converting those notes and photos into a SIM Tech Report, and this is the result. Here are a couple photos from the book:       The download price is only $6.00. In most cases, Paypal will take you to the download site when you place your order, otherwise I will send you an e-mail with a link to the pdf file. It is about 92MB file and contains over 60 photos of the model build in-progress. To order just the Nova book, click the button below: or use the main order page to order the book plus any other SIM publication.  This volume was released in December 2017.