For years I have wanted to replace the old Aurora kit of the Orion III that I lost years ago but the cost was too high and the old Airfix kit has several accuracy issues. But now my wait is over as Moebius has released their second kit from the movie 2001 and it is a beauty.

The new kit of the Orion III Space Clipper is very simple to build with only 12 white plastic parts and 5 clear parts (and that includes 2 pieces for the stand). The parts are well packaged with the tail parts extra protected for the tail prongs. Unfortunately, one of mine was bent but a little finger pressure put it back in line. The fit is pretty good though I still had a little trouble matching up the fuselage seams and there were gaps between the upper wings and fuselage. I used some styrene strip to fill the later.

Ah nostalgia... one of the big benefits of modeling is bringing back memories. Pegasus Hobbies new release of the ship and Martian from My Favorite Martian will certainly do that. For those of you who don't know the show, it ran between 1963 and 1966 for 107 episodes and chronicled the exploits of a crashed Martian anthropologist and the newspaper reporter who found him crashed. The showed starred Bill Bixby as the reporter and Ray Walston as Uncle Martin. Of course most people remember him as Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and many other things. Bill Bixby played the Incredible Hulk way back when. Both were excellent actors and the show was very funny, at least to me.

Possibly one of the world’s most recognizable flying machines, the NASA Space Shuttle was the first reusable piloted spacecraft, and to this day remains unrivaled in versatility and success in that role. Having its genesis in waning years of the Apollo Program, the Shuttle evolved throughout the early 70’s, dodging the lethal pens of budget-cutters, and matured into what now is the icon of American manned spaceflight. Now, 30 years after the maiden flight, the program draws to a close in 2011.

Dr. Baker skillfully and intimately captures the history and underlying technology of the Shuttle program and its family of 6 craft in this beautiful 196-page hard-backed edition. The volume is well-written by a man with first-hand experience in the program, and packed with over 250 photos and technical illustrations – a modeler’s dream!

The Maschinen Krieger universe is a SciFi series created in the 1980’s by Kow Yokoyama and ran as a series of stories in Japanese Hobby Magazine Hobby Japan. Many of the creations are permutations of WW I and WW II tanks and aircraft upgraded and all started with powered armored suits. In 2009, Hasegawa received the license for the kits and entered the market with the Falke, Lunadiver Stingray and now the P.K.H. 103 Nutcracker, a hover tank. After building the Lunadiver Stingray, when this came up for review, I wanted to add to the collection I am building.

Inside the box are 8 tan sprues and an upper and lower hull for the Nutcracker. Molding is superb with fines detail. Also included are 5 sprues to build two of the powered suits, a Gustav and Melusine. Finishing out the box is a large decal sheet and painting guide detailing the 5 options available for the tank. More painting instructions are also on the box bottom.

Editor's note: Dragon Models USA is the Fine Molds Models Importer in the USofA but this review author provided his own kit, out of pocket, for this review. The kit is currently very difficult to find on the retail market.

Pros:

• Superbly engineered kit, very little filling or correcting will be needed.
• Best kit of this subject ever released.

Cons:

• Expensive, now increasingly hard to acquire. (I apologise for teasing you with the review)
• Instructions in Japanese (note: may not actually be a con if you *are* Japanese)

Overall

A pricy kit but you get what you pay for in this case. Given the cost and the fact that viable alternatives are around, this not for a casual SW fan or model builder. Instead, this kit is for somebody who wants to do a really nice job on a Y-Wing fighter with a maximum of detail and a minimum of grief.