Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - Question re: Mercury escape tower

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Sams

It's from the recent 1/35 scale Estes kit, which, as I understand it, is a morph of the earlier 1/35 Centuri kit.

I have three in my stash. Interestingly enough, two have the capsule and tower molded in red plastic while this one was molded in white but is otherwise identical.

Doug

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Yes, I believe the 'original' Centuri Mercury Redstone plastic capsules were typically molded in black plastic. I have some number of the early 90s Estes re-issue (same exact capsule....they owned the mold by then) and they are (were) molded in red plastic. Then.....the even later releases (like for the Mercury-Atlas kit) and the 'Liberty Bell 7' Mercury-Redstone kit were in white plastic (typically).

I think Centuri did a nice job on the capsule. As one can see from the various 'real' Mercury spacecraft photos posted in this thread that the tower legs and crossmembers are definitely over-sized (in cross-section diameter) in the Centuri version, but if molded to 'true-scale', those plastic members would have been probably way too fragile for a 'flying' kit and would undoubtedly have broken very easily.

Earl