Convair Super-Nexus Super-Booster (1962)

Scale: 1/700
Initial Release: 2020
Medium: Resin
Kit Rarity: 2

About the Design

In the early 1960s, America’s aerospace giants began developing plans for heavy lift boosters that would help carry manned interplanetary vehicles into space during the post-Apollo era. Plans at this time included manned landing on Mars by 1982, with permanent bases established on the Red Planet by 1986. Add to this a manned Jupiter flyby by 1997, and manned flights to Uranus and Neptune by the century’s end.

Obviously, NASA needed big boosters. REALLY big boosters. To answer this need, the Convair division of General Dynamics, the company responsible for the Atlas ICBM among other aerospace vehicles, proposed a whole series of giant reusable boosters dubbed the NEXUS family. The largest of these was the “Super Nexus,” a booster capable of lifting 2 million pounds of payload into space in a single launch. The craft’s lower section would return to earth and land in the water with the assistance of large chemical-powered rockets situated along its perimeter.

The Super NEXUS was to stand 401 feet tall, compared to 363 feet for the Saturn V, but to have a base measuring 160 feet in diameter, compared to just 33 feet for the Saturn V. Development of the Super Nexus concept was abandoned in the late 1960s as domestic spending became the Johnson Administration’s priority.

About the Kit

The Super Nexus was part of the first in a planned series of Post-Saturn "Super-Boosters," all in 1:700 scale. Released in Q4 2020, this initial set included the Super Nexus, plus an in-scale Saturn V for comparison.

This model was built from the original issue.