MISSIONE APOLLO 13, 14 APRILE 1970

 (Tranlsated from the Italian)

Space exploration and in particular the missions that brought man to the moon certainly represent a fascinating conquest which, in my opinion, must be honored and remembered. Surely the Apollo mission number 13 in my opinion in its failure of not arriving on the Moon was the bravest, three men found themselves at the mercy of nothing due to a technical problem and thanks to their cold blood and help received from the Earth, however, they managed to return even performing a maneuver that led them to go around the Moon at a distance of over 400,170 km from the Earth, a distance never reached by other human beings.

I will not deny that the film with Tom Hanks who played Commander Jim Lovell ignited the spark for the realization of the work.

I thought, “If the astronaut scenes are all shot in the LEM module you don’t want to be able to recreate that situation.” It was important to concentrate everything inside the cabin, without distractions, the observer had to see, be immersed inside the cabin, and the problem was just finding the cabin. From many searches on the web almost nothing, I had even found a paper project, but impossible to make truthful, the self-construction would have been a titanic undertaking.

I finally found the inside of the LEM on a 3d print site shapeways.com. There was practically everything, but broken down into various parts to be assembled at a total cost that was not exactly cheap, but it was the only way.

When everything arrives to me, the parts were in transparent resin, excellent for inserting lights, but being filament prints, they still had a waxy surface patina which created quite a few problems for me to remove.

In any case, once the parts were assembled, the painting began by observing the real photos available on the web and at the same time inserting the LEDs and the optical fiber for the various commands.

I wanted to represent the moment in which astronauts see the moon but aware that they will never set foot there are both fascinated and disappointed, and therefore having found a miniature moon, I inserted it behind the cabin window and lit it with a led, as if was the sun, also to give a sense of approach I fixed it on a scooter that turns slowly.

The figurines were sculpted with the usual two-component stuccos, referring to all the real images that described their equipment.

Once the box was built, I made a hole on the front that allowed the inside of the cabin and the astronauts to be seen and protected everything with transparent plexiglass.

I think the attached images describe the work done and the final result, I hope I have succeeded in representing that moment that kept the Americans and the whole world in suspense for the fate of the three astronauts and thank goodness everything at the end it ended with the return to earth.

A story with a happy ending which nonetheless celebrated the courage and ingenuity of the human being if we consider the technological means of the time.