Updated: January 17, 2008

As a long time fan of Irwin Allen, I discovered your site many years ago and keep visiting it. I had a lot of fun browsing your site. Congratulations for your great job!

I'm particulary interested in the Lost in Space series and the classic Jupiter-2. I remember since my youth (now I'm 39...) trying to build the Jupiter-2 prop with different materials (cardboard, tinny, fiber glass...). But since I'm not an artist like Ron Gross, Jim Key and others, I never got satisfied with the result. When Polar Lights put the 12" Jupiter-2 kit on the market I bought 8 kits and spent lots (!) of money to import them (at that time it was very hard to find those kits here in Brazil, and I would like to have many different versions, and also keep "backup" kits).

But what really got my attention was the diorama built by Jim Key. It is great! When I saw it I instantly get mad to have it. Well, due to the impossibility of buying it, I decided to built "my version" of it. But I had in mind that my diorama had to be easy to move around, doesn't occupy much space and also be easy to "protect from childrem" from broken it... So I choosed the 1:500 scale.)

I did a mod on the Jupiter-2´s upper hull (as you'll certantly note): It is more curved and done with one single curve. I thougth it looked more interesting in this scale.

On time: I built three different versions of my mini Jupiter-2 prop: the unit used in this diorama has 3 working LEDs: a yellow one on the top, a white one on the cockpit and a blue one on the fusion core. The diorama has its own power unit (4.5 V) running with 3 AAA cels. It measures (13,0w X 7,0d X 11,0h) centimeters. It took me 3 weekends to buid it. The materials used were: wood, plastic and resin. To paint it I used Revell enamels.

It would be great if many others model builders (with much more talent of me!) inspire themselves and build their own versions of Lost in Space dioramas to help keep the great Irwin Allen World alive!!

Daniel Simon Rodrigues From São Paulo, Brazil