There's not much in 1:700 besides warships and accessories, - save the occasional Japanese castle. Tomy-Tec of Japan however has released a small line of real space models: a line of US space shuttles, and this beauty: the International Space Station. I've followed the ongoing construction of the ISS since 1998 and at one time I bought the ridiculous 1:72 kit by Heller. (note: that kit omitted the truss structure and solar panels completely). That project foundered, because for someone used to 1:700 warships, a ridiculously large model in 1:72 is just too much out of the comfort zone. So, no ISS on my shelves. Until last week.
The kit is prepainted and is almost of a snap-together nature. Because of the nature, aligning all trusses, modules and thingamabobs is quite daunting. Also, some small things are misrepresented: the small Russian Rassvet module is shown offset 90 degrees (easily fixed) and the solar panels on the Zarya module (first module launched) have long since refolded to their accordeon appearance to avoid the humongous radiator arrays jutting from the central girder. That will be trickier to fix: one does not simply cut and fold the rather thick panels. The plastic can be rough around the edges with some mold flash here and there. Along the Zvezda-Zarya-Unity-Destiny axis, a nasty seam remains visible, which can not easily be hidden.
Several additional spacecraft are supplied: a Shuttle (the Atlantis), a Soyuz (at least one short there), a Progress, the European ATV and the Japanese HTV. Sadly, no SpaceX Dragon or OSC Cygnus are present.
This kit builds to a nice enough representation of the ISS, small enough for a desktop or shelve. Comparing this outpost with, say, a WWI battleship is a nice engineering contrast. In the last image, compare her to a Tamiya Fletcher-class DD!



