Revell 1/144 Armageddon Space Shuttle Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

In 1998, Touchstone Pictures released the movie 'Armageddon' that puts together an unlikely team of oil drillers and astronauts who attempt to intercept an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and neutralize the threat. This follows another Earth extinction movie 'Deep Impact' released two months earlier with a similar plot. Meanwhile, Revell (USA) released two kits from the movie 'Armageddon' that year, the X-71 (tarted-up) Space Shuttle and the Russian Space Center, both in 1/144 scale. This Space Shuttle is a notional upgrade to the NASA Space Shuttle and is designated as the X-71. The differences include swept-up outer wing panels, additional winglets above the main wing, and solid rocket boosters attached to the cargo bay doors.

The kit is molded in gray styrene and presented on four parts trees plus one tree of tinted clear parts. The kit includes a movable beaver tail, opening cargo bay doors, and choice of displaying the model gear down or on an included display stand with the gear up or down. The kit also includes a scale Armadillo drilling vehicle.

By some coincidence, the various cable/satellite channels are playing frequent reruns of both Armageddon and Deep Impact. Since I didn't pay much attention to these kits when they were first released, I was pleasantly surprised to see these are still available at bargain prices if you know where to look. I also acquired the Russian Space Center which we examined recently. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if anyone had ever produced the Messiah spacecraft from 'Deep Impact' and Fantastic Plastic recently released a 1/200 scale Messiah (27 inches long) consisting of over 200 resin parts (so brace yourself for the price).