Apollo 11 Display – National Museum of Nuclear Science and History

The Albuquerque Scale Modelers (ASM) club provided a model display to support a 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing event at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. The museum was running the film “The Day We Walked on the Moon” three times on Saturday, July 20th, simultaneously with other Smithsonian-related museums across America. The museum also had Apollo Program artifacts from their collection on display for the duration of the event. The ASM model display was set up at the museum on July 15th and 16th, and has a total of 16 models. Eleven are Real Space models, and five are Theoretical Space models from the designs of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. See pictures below. We have two models from Apollo 11 – the Command Service Module Columbia and docked Lunar Module (LM) approaching the Moon in 1/72 scale, and the Lunar Module Eagle in 1/48 scale; and one model from Apollo 17 – the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) in 1/35 scale. There are also models representing the X-15 program, Project Mercury (Mercury-Redstone 3 – Alan Shepard), Project Gemini (Gemini 3 – Gus Grissom and John Young), and the Space Shuttle program (Challenger), along with an astronaut with Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), a V-2 rocket, the Vanguard TV-4 satellite launch vehicle, and a Soyuz space capsule. Theoretical Space models include the Lunar Lander Concept Design by Dr. Wernher von Braun, 3 Stage Ferry Rocket and Retriever Rocket from Colliers Magazine, the Nuclear Exploratory Vehicle design for a nuclear-powered spaceship, and the Mars Liner from the Disneyland Rocket to the Moon exhibit.