Astronauts (Airfix)

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Astronauts (Airfix)

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in storage


1971 - 2019


A box of unpainted plastic 1:76 00-scale NASA Astronauts.

This is a 2019 reissue (under the Airfix "Vintage Classics" marque) of a 1971 set originally issued to coincide with the Apollo Moon Landings.

Contents

  • Astronaut with flag – ×1
  • Astronaut with soil sampler – ×2
  • Astronaut carrying containers – ×2
  • Astronaut leaning – ×2
  • Astronaut with video camera – ×2
  • Astronaut on Hover pad – ×2
  • Astronauts on 2-person hover craft – ×1
  • Astronaut on Lunar Rover – ×2

Scale

While model spacecraft (like model aircraft) are often produced in 1:72 scale, Airfix' decision to make these figures in 1:76 scale caused a certain amount of amusement, and made people wonder if somebody, somewhere in the organisation had made a mistake ... because 1:76 is not a standard scale for aerospace modelling, but instead corresponds to the scale used by British model railway modellers (00-gauge).

Astronauts in 1:72 scale would make sense.

But it is quite difficult to imagine why a British model railway layout would include fully-suited NASA Apollo astronauts (waiting for a train?). It is even more difficult to imagine how, in the astronauts' normal environments of space or the lunar surface, they would encounter a British steam locomotive or railway station, or 00-scale farmyard animals.