Lake County SpacePort 

                                                                                       "Ad Astra per Formae"

2001 - A Space Odyssey


Preface - "A modeler's odyssey"

When the Stanley Kubrick - Aurthur C. Clarke film was released in 1968, I was enamored with spaceflight. Apollo was at full-trot, with the success of Apollo 7 in October and the upcoming flight of Apollo 8. Then, in the late months of '68, Kubrick & Clarke delivered a vision of the future that seemed both realistic and compelling, but behind it was the enigmatic story of the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence that fueled human evolution, and drove the Discovery mission out to Jupiter.

I cannot remember how many times I saw the film "in-theater," and today I own the Collector's Edition DVD. This film entered my consciousness in 1968 and never really left.

Therefore, building the models of 2001 became an "eventuality." Early on, there were only two kits sold by Aurora Plastics - the Space Clipper and the Moon Bus. In a number of other cases, there were resin kits out there, but either I did not know about them or they were too expensive for the "average modeler" to acquire. My local hobby suppliers did not stock "garage model kits," so the Aurora products were the only ones I could get.

I built the first Moon Bus in the early '70s, and it has managed to survive, except for its upper antenna, which was broken years ago. There was also an early Aurora Orion Space Clipper, but it's whereabouts are not know. I replaced it recently with the Moebius Models version and it's detail and decal set were much, much better.

But over the last few years, thanks to the Internet and a bit of research, other avenues of access have been opened and kits long desired have been acquired - and built at last!

The models that appear in this section can be divided into three groups:

Those which I have owned since they were originally released by Aurora Plastics - The Moon Bus;

Those which have re-built or re-discovered - The Mobeus Models Orion Clipper and the revised Clavius Moon Bus, now with interior lighting;

And, those models which I have literally waited 40 years to find and finally build - The Stargazer Models Ares 1B Lunar Shuttle, C & R Models EVA Pod, the Stargazer model of Discovery and Fantastic Plastic's Space Station V. More recently, Moebius has expanded their 2001 offerings by providing the huge, beautiful 1/8 scale EVA Pod and the 1/48 scale Aries 1B Moon Shuttle. Both made "massive" impacts on our collection. 

 

Click on the images below to see much, much more.

 

The Aries 1B Shuttle in 1/144 scale

from Stargazer Models

The Discovery in 1/144 scale from

Stargazer Models

Space Station V from Fantastic Plastic

The Orion Space Clipper from Mobeus Models 

The Clavius Moon Bus

from Aurora Plastics & Moebius Models 

The 1/32 scale EVA Pod from C&R Models

Discovery XD-1 in 1/144 scale from

Moebius Models

The 2001 EVA Pod in 1/8 scale

from Moebius Models

The Aries 1B Moon Shuttle in 1/48 scale

from Moebius Models

Orion Space Clipper Booster Concept 

based on the Moebius Models Clipper kit

The Alexei Leonov from "2010 - The Year We Made Contact"

in 1/350 scale from "GAS Designs - ToyCave Collectibles"

HAL 9000's Memory Room - a 3D printed model

offered by "Badjer1" on CGTrader