Mat Irvine: Well, I've remembered recently that age -- around 6 or 7 -- I was building models out of matchsticks and Plasticine (the British modelling clay - most famous these days as the basis for Wallace and Gromit!) of spacecraft that I'd seen in the weekly Disney comic that was available over here. Many years later I would discover that these were from the Disney adaptation of what had originally appeared in the 1952 issues of Colliers, though I didn't understand such details at the time. In reality I suppose I then by-passed 'space modelling' as such until around late teens when I started working for BBC Television News. As this was a time of Apollo - 'rediscovered' an interest - which was used by some of the programs.

Interesting question, I think a great deal can be put down to the fact that you are working with your hands. As Sir Arthur (C. Clarke) says in his introduction to the book, "I sometimes have nightmares of beautiful bridges being designed ... by engineers who have never ... tightened a nut..". It is that 'hands on' experience - actually having that tactile contact with the materials. You work with your hands building a model, then you want to control the real thing.

Actually a series of Land Speed Record cars in 1:24/1:25 scale! I know perhaps not directly relevant to the subject, but some ARE rocket subjects. Also I've always felt that there is a vast wealth of designs to be tapped of relevant items BEFORE World War II and the V2, such as Goddard, and even earlier. Currently this hasn't interested the specialist manufacturers, and certainly not the mainstream. Space probes are another topic that originally was missing, though in recent years some of the specialist companies, particularly RealSpace Models, are starting to come to the rescue.

Realistically model making IS less popular than in earlier times, if you take it as a percentage of the population, mostly as there is so much else to do these days. In the heyday of the modern construction kit (really the 1960s) there really wasn't much else to do for boys (and OK we admit it's a boys'y thing..) to do? You played football (er, proper football or maybe American Football ... :-) ); went to youth clubs - or built models. These days there is so much else to occupy younger minds, (of any age..) so we do have the situation that modelling appears to be shrinking in popularity, but arguably that could be said about a number of hobbies and interests? I think everyone concerned with the industry is interesting in attracting the younger generation - boys and girls - into being creative. After all where do we get all the new designers, engineers and technicians?

'Model making' is 'model making', whether it be 'static' or 'working'. Actually we did have the odd situation in the UK as up until November 1987 it was - technically - illegal to fly model rockets in the country. This wasn't actually anything to do with the actual launching and flying as most people thought. It was that the placing of the rocket motor into the rocket was deemed to be 'manufacturing' as defined in the Explosive Act of 1883, which had never been repealed. Consequently, active flying model rockets was somewhat limited, until a modification to the law was passed that year. So these days it's far more liberal and I was probably one of the first to show the joys of the model rocketry hobby on a BBC TV series I presented, called TECHNO. Yes I do have a large collection of - mostly scale - flying rockets, though I don't get to fly them as often as I would like. (It's a relatively small country and doesn't really have the wide open spaces of Arizona or Nevada!)

To what extent are the models from science fiction are part of your collection and your passion for building?

As I've worked for television for the majority of my career, I was in the interesting position of combining 'work' with 'hobby'. I was designing and building models for filming for such television SF series as Doctor Who and Blake's 7, but also building the commercial kits of craft from such as Star Wars and Star Trek. But then again, most of us in the industry, did. One aspect of special effects model making is 'kit bashing' - taking parts from one model and using then on a new one. The more outrageous the re-use the better! Once I even used tiny existing craft as 'visitors' to a space station I did for a children's SF series!

I suppose the glib answer (parodying something our Prime Minister once said) is "research", "research" and "research". (He said "education", "education" and "education", if you are wondering). However maybe that isn't so far from the truth? The major problem with any space model - any model - is that the commercial manufacturers can only go so far. When it really comes down to it, it is what the builder can add to the finished result - and most of that comes down to the way you research the project. What exactly ARE the colors; what exactly ARE the correct markings and did that rocket really carry that payload for that mission?

I suppose it really has to go back to the start of the industry and the 'futuristic' kits of the fifties from Strombecker, Revell, Lindberg and Monogram. We all thought "This was how it SHOULD be done", as at that time the 'space age' was in its infancy. But of course by the sixties the real craft had come along, especially Project Apollo, which the model industry could only reflect. Since then the industry has continued to reflect this - including, one has to say, the ups and downs - and 'real' items have dominated the subject matter. It would be interesting to see if any company - large or small - could be bold enough to take on some of the current futuristic designs, as they did in the 1950s? There are enough of them.

There is a great deal of difference. When the modern construction kit industry began (late 1950s-early 1960s) the basis of it was that there was a 'modern' form of plastic - polystyrene - available which allowed highly detailed castings to be made by injecting the molten material into steel tools. This is the basic for all modern 'construction kits', (earlier kits has used the far less stable plastic, cellulose acetate). But to do this you need large, heavy - and expensive - steel tooling. Far cheaper is take a flat sheet of the same polystyrene and 'vac-form' it over a shape. This led to a, admittedly large, specialist 'sub-section' of the industry, producing conversion parts for existing kits - and even whole kits - of objects the mainstream companies wouldn't consider viable. But it's a very specialist field and needs far more expertise in putting together than even a complex 'standard' construction kit. So although vac-forms do have their followers, they are not really to be recommended for the new, or even average, builder. As to 'which do I prefer?' interestingly the number of vac-form kits for space subjects has been relative small, it far more an aircraft thing, (and even here resin molding has largely replaced vac-form for specialist models). So, I will certainly build vac-forms, but for space subjects, there's just not that many.

This could apply to any model. My other main modelling interest is cars, and there have been some car kits - from Japan - that arguably (heavens!) were TOO detailed. It's difficult. The purist would always argue for more details, but you don't want to put off the beginner (or even 'average') modeler with a kit that is just so complex that they worry just how they are going to start it, let alone finish it.