Much of Nick Proach’s work is out of this world. Dawson Creek’s Proach is all about the art and details behind making space models. While firmly grounded in real-world models – Proach is still the final frontier. No Star Destroyers or Klingon Birds of Prey here – Proach is all about exploring the space, sea and air of the real world. Combining his passion for space exploration and history with self-taught model building skills over the years, he results in the precise scale and detail that transforms a normal space model project into a true work of art. Proach’s models range in size from a four-inch-tall model of Goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket – to a 16-foot-tall Saturn V moon rocket – to a 28-foot-wide communications satellite – it’s safe to say that Proach’s work is literally , and figurative stars. “I have been involved with the space program since I was a child. Alan Sheppard, John Glenn and others,” he says. In 1971, a younger Proach built a model of the Apollo 15 lunar rover before the mission was launched. He called a few TV stations where he was living in Toronto at the time. “A week before the release, CTV’s Bob Conroy called me and asked to see the model. I was given a flight plan, lunar procedures, and asked to create the entire Apollo 15 landing pad with experiments for use during CTV’s coverage of the moonwalks.” He took on a series of freelance contracts, and by 1994 Proach was launching his spacecraft more complete and focused. “I started getting contracts.” Some of those contracts include working with an Ottawa Aerospace Museum, NASA, the US Air Force, the odd TV show and movie, aerospace companies including Space X, some astronauts, and a documentary by an actor who played the astronaut Jim Lovell – a Tom Hanks. Proach has also met and known several astronauts, including some who actually walked on the moon. “That first Apollo mission really grabbed me. Those first men on the moon led me from building cars and marine ships to spaceships.” Some of his space models have been in space, flying in or alongside their real-life counterparts. “In 2002 NASA was working on components for the International Space Station, and some of these space station models that were built for NASA became training components,” says Proach. His work has flown on both the US Space Shuttle in 2002 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2008. “Today 3D printers can really help create individual parts and components,” he says. His work is on display in a small museum – not much bigger than those original Apollo astronaut capsules – right here at Mile Zero in the B2 Auto Zone on 102nd Avenue. Small group tours can be arranged by appointment. For more than 50 years, Proach has closely followed the Canadian, US and Russian space programs. It can produce a model of any aerospace subject. A close look at the models brings up the reality that astronauts have been in space – the equivalent of a big can of soup. Re-entry into the atmosphere could be as painful an experience as the explosion, with nothing but rocket fuel sending you into orbit. “On reentry they go about 25,000 miles per hour. Astronauts accept the risk and realize they are test pilots and risk is something they don’t think much about. They were rolling it over and saying “we had to deal with what we had to deal with”. That’s how these guys are.” In 2020 Proach and his wife Connie took off from the Sunshine Coast and landed at Mile Zero. “Another guy I met was ‘the loneliest man in the Universe’ – Al Worden, who orbited the moon alone while David Scott and Jim Irwin were on the moon during Apollo 15 in 1971. Proach says that while there are a number of space model designers – the market for people looking for these types of models is smaller. “It’s quite a narrow market – but there are quite a few groups who follow the story and know what happened. Quite a number of customers are located in the US. We don’t build too many – they’re still not mass-produced,” he says. A rover signed by the last crew on the moon, Harrison Schmidt and Gene Cernan, sits nearby. The largest model Proach built was a project for Expo ’86, a satellite about 28 feet plus in size. In his shop, Proach has models of the first rocket ever launched from Cape Canaveral, a model of Yuri Gagarin of the USSR, an Apollo 9 spacecraft signed by the entire crew, a Gemini spacecraft after splashdown, John Glenn’s Mercury spacecraft , as well as some more modern ones like the Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Dragon II spacecraft and NASA’s new Space Launch System, the replacement for the space shuttle, which is tentatively scheduled to take off on its maiden flight to the moon in late August. “This will take an unmanned trip around the moon, and then in about 2 years, a four-person crew will go up,” he says. Lift off.
