Space captivated our imagination since the first human turned his/her eyes towards a star filled skies. While for millennia, space exploration was limited to observing night skies from the ground, this all changed in 1957, when Soviet Union launched world’s first satellite – Sputnik-1. This event started a space race between the US and Soviet Union which ended with landings on the Moon and soon after the collaboration between different nations in space exploration.

Returning back to the 1957 and Sputnik’s success, US government created NASA, to speed up their own space programme. NASA launched their first satellite, Explorer 1, the next year. The Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin as the first human to space on an orbital flight in April 1961, while NASA followed less than a month later with Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight and the race was on. By the 1963, when Mercury programme ended, both Soviets and American’s sent 6 people to the space, each.

Mercury capsule was built by McDonnell Aircraft and included supplies of water and food for about a day. The rockets used in the programme were converted nuclear ballistic missiles – Redstone and Atlas. Redstone was used with the first two manned suborbital missions, carrying Shepard and Grissom, while the later four orbital missions were launched with more powerful Atlas rocket.

Mercury 7 astronauts:
Alan B. Shepard Jr. – Freedom 7 – 5th May 1961
Virgil I. Grissom – Liberty Bell 7 – 21st July 1961
John H. Glenn Jr. – Friendship 7 – 20th February 1962
M. Scott Carpenter – Aurora 7 – 24th May 1962
Walter M. Schirra Jr. – Sigma 7 – 3rd October 1962
L. Gordon Cooper – Faith 7 – 15th May 1963

The kit

Horizon Model’s Mercury spacecraft is an interesting kit that adds an important piece of history to your real space collection and it can also be quite an easy project to build. What you get in the box are two identical sprues of plastic parts, decal sheet and a small photoetched fret. The later is made out of steel instead of brass and is a bit troublesome to shape – even after annealing it. Plastic parts fit together really well. Decals behaved nicely and include markings for all the spacecraft.
BONUS: You also get two boilerplate (unmanned) capsules in the kit, that are not mentioned in the instructions, including the decals for two such missions (Big Joe and MR-BD). What you don’t get, are the heatshields for them, however, the inclusion of the upper ring of the Atlas rocket leads you to use them as separate stands.

The good:
– good fit
– good surface details
– nice decal sheet
– bonus parts and decals for boilerplate missions

The bad:
– steel PE parts hard to shape

Model Data
Company: Horizon Models / 2003
Scale: 1:72
Aftermarket: /

Decals: kit decals

Paints used: Mr.Paint
MRP-077 NATO Black, MRP-014 Sea Blue, MRP-004 White, MRP-360 Red Rust
Metallics: MRP-009 White Aluminium