This is the Fantastic Plastic resin CEV kit with a homemade Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) booster and Launch Abort System (LAS).  The CLV and LAS were built from parts of other kits and plastic sheet and tubing.

The LAS was made from 0.438 inch diameter plastic tubing.  The nose cone of the LAS was taken from a 1/288 space shuttle solid rocket motor.  The motor skirt on the LAS was cut from the engine bell from a 1/96 Apollo Service Module kit.  The rocket motors on the LAS are from a 1/200 Saturn IB kit.  The LAS sits atop the upper portion of a 1/96 Apollo command module that is used to adapt from the LAS tube to the top of the CEV crew module.

The upper stage of the CLV was made from a 3 inch diameter plastic tube from Plastruct.  The adapter section between the first and second stages was cut from the nose cone of an Estes Rubicon model rocket.  The CLV first stage solid rocket motor is from the Monogram 1/72 shuttle and boosters kit.  The 2 CLV stages are held together by an internal plastic rod.

Decals were homemade using various logos found on the internet.  The only exception to this is the CEV decals which were from the kit. 

The base is from the 1980s Revell 1/144 Space Operations Center kit.

The overall kit is 51.5 inches tall which scales out to 309 feet, which was the height of the NASA design at the time I started building in March 2006.  Since then the design has changed somewhat.  The diameter of the CEV has been reduced from 5.5m (3 inches in 1/72) to 5m (2.75 inches).  Because of this the real design now has an adapter section between the CEV and CLV that narrows whereas mine does not.  Also the design has changed from a 4 segment solid rocket motor (like the shuttle uses) to a longer 5 section motor.  Since my kit has a 4 segment motor, I made my 2^nd stage longer to achieve the correct 309 foot height (this is now changed to 320.7 feet in the latest drawing I have seen).  Hopefully in the future more accurate kits of the real, flying vehicle will be available, but my model represents an early design concept for this vehicle.

The large photo shows the kit with the Monogram 1/72 scale shuttle kit for size comparison.

I’d like to express my appreciation to Allen and anyone else that may have been involved in producing the Fantastic Plastic CEV kit – great job.