Tintin's moon rocket

... Or rather the rocket of Professor Calculus (for all you english speaking people), Professor Tournesol to all the francophones or, as we in Dutchyland call him, Professor Zonnebloem.

A nice and straightforward build. I did this one in 1/96th, while the original is 1/144. I am in luck with my A3 printer, so I am able to easily enlarge these things.

The model is designed by Jason "Jayo" Sutton and is not available on the interwebs anymore due to copyright issues with the heirs of Hergé's art. I sent Jason a mail about this build, I hope he likes what he sees.

There was an additional part in the download in which the interior of the payload bay could be detailed. There even was a suggestion to put in lighting. And I thought well, why not? So I got myself some 5mm LED's, nine all together, with the fitting resistors. A little later, after some soldering, the wiring was done and inserted in the rocket. The wires go through the rear fin down to the "teardrop" on which it stands and I made a construction using two cardboard rolls which fitted tightly into one another to house the 9V battery.

It's not perfect, it was just a fun build. All I need to do now is add a couple more layers of transparent gloss to seal and shine the skin. In the instructions Jayo mentioned "nothing in Hergé's world shines" but if not even gold in his albums has a shine, then it must be very dull. I decided gold is shiny and so this rocket has a shine, too.

I put my Xacto next to the teardrop leg to give an idea of size

Here's one pic, the rest is after the break.

While working on the rocket I only made this picture.

My cat Muis sniffing glue

The rear "teardrop" leg hides two tightly fitting paper cylinders..

...In which a 9V battery is housed...

The wiring goes up through the fin, which has a small tunnel.

Lights off...

Lights on.

Not visible well, but behind the window there's another two LED's.

There are also two LEDs in the cargo bay, in which you find all kinds of containers and crates.

The smaller airlock door is open too and has its own lighting, too.

To show how big it is between my 1/96 realspace launchers.

 So there it is.  With its 65-70 cm it's a bit too big for my shelves and I cannot leave it in my room for fear the cats will knock it off its feet. I hope I can put it somewhere in my office workspace, I'm sure it will look nice there and it might be a fun piece of conversation when people visit.

Up next: A probe or satellite? Hubble? Skylab? Maybe I'll do a realspace rocket first. We'll see. Thanks for the support and until soon!

--EDIT March 9 2013--
This is my all-time most visited post on my site. I presume most of you come here on a quest to find the model itself. I am really sorry there is almost not a chance you will be able to find it. I won't send anyone the model on request, although I happen to have it. I downloaded it just before it went offline, I guess. It is Jason's model and he has decided to take it down and heed the owners of Hergé's work and not distribute it any more. I will do so too. However, with a big model of a V-2 body and some creative skills, you can get pretty close.