by David Zook

For those who aren't familiar with "Space 1999", it was one of the all-time dumbest premises for a TV series: The year is 1999, and mankind is using the moon to dump their nuclear waste. In the first episode, the nuclear dump explodes and blows the moon out of orbit, sending it and Moonbase Alpha on an adventure to other worlds. It was a Gerry Anderson show, with all his great spacecraft designs.

For this model, I started with a 17" disk that I cut out of a 1/16" thick sheet of styrene. On that I formed the moon surface out of 2 1/2 pounds of Aves' Apoxie Sculpt, using various spheres, etc. to make the craters. I had to buy two "Alpha Moonbase" kits in order to have the correct number of Eagle landing pads, radiation domes (the travel-tube end-domes), and flammable materials bunkers (the cone shaped travel-tube ends). I corrected the shape of a few of the buildings with styrene sheet, and also scratchbuilt one small building that didn't come with the kit. I added the triangular docking area on all the Eagle landing pads. Then I cut 44 lengths of coat-hanger wire to use for the travel tubes. I didn't have any reference photos for the Laser Batteries, and I couldn't remember what they looked like, so I just made five little offset cannons tipped with the leftover radar dishes from the Nostromo model to give them a sort of "ray-gun" look. I painted the moon surface with Model Masters Neutral Gray, and the moonbase with Model Masters Flat White. Then I glued the whole thing to the moon surface with Elmer's Craft Glue. I used a map of Moonbase Alpha that I found online as a guide. There are two Eagle Transporters on their landing pads. One is a standard Eagle, and the other is a Rescue Eagle. The Rescue Eagle is on the landing pad nearest the Medical Center, and has a docking tunnel hooked up to it. There is also a hole in the back so that the whole thing can be hung on a wall.

Image: Left side view

Image: Rear

Image: Right side

Image: On the wall