"Moon dirt"

Modeling Subjects Dioramas
1

Hi guys. I’m building an older Airfix 1/72 apollo moon landing and if anyone has built this you know that the circular base that it comes with doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the experiment equipment. So I wanted to expand the base in a diorama fashion. I’m asking for ideas on that scale moon dirt/dust. I got some ideas from this forum to include: dental pumice, aquarium filter material, and for the bigger stuff, “curbside gravel”. I was also wondering about baking flour. Would that work or would it dissolve in the adhesive/binder?

Thanks!

2

Sidewalk or regular writing chalk. Chopped or ground up.

3

Use regular Portland cement as that is what the lunar surface looks like.

4

I’m 100% sure there is at least one other discussion on here about this exact topic. Maybe 1 1/2 to 2 years ago?

5

Don’t use anything from the kitchen. If the mice don’t eat it first, it’ll turn yellow.

6

Thanks guys! Those are the exact ideas I was looking for! I’m gonna do some experimenting.

@mitsdude: Yah, sorry if its a repeat. I put in several searches with “0 results found” and after the first 10 pages of posts I got weary and lost patience. :slight_smile:

@GMorrison: Thats a good one! I would have never thought of that.

7

Lunar albedo (fractional reflectivity) is only about 0.12 – in other words, asphalt.

8

Yeah, been there with the search results. Lots of duplicate/false hits. Didn’t intend my response to be a thread crap.

9

Well yes and no. The moon has an albedo factor of 0.12, but that’s an average. In other words; half moon. There’s also a bunch of other variables such as incidence of reflection to the observer on earth, all giving a variable of up to 50%. So an .17 albedo is possible- wet dirt and grass. But certainly not like white powder.

Earth is a nice .35 on account of our clouds.

Anyone remember the Vangelis album “Albedo 039”?

10

Might want to look at tile grout.

11

Well, I prefer REAL moon dirt of course, but I think the chalk (or plaster) option is probably the best as you can break that stuff down into smaller pieces as needed.

12

Whoah! WHOOP…WHOOP! Nerd Alert! Just kidding guys. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I get the gist by the picture. I started out trying to get avery axact detail right (yes I’m another perfectionist by nature). But at this point, close enough is good enough. I have to at least get 1 model done!! (out of 5 in the works). I appreciate EVERYONE’S tips!

13

Oh and by the way, I AM gonna make it a few shades darker now. :slight_smile:

14

Short story- In my day job, I curate display cases among other things. We recently installed cases in the new football wing of a D1 University. And one of the items was a football that went to space on the shuttle. One of the guys from ANOTHER vendor was carrying it around.

“Don’t lose that!” I told him.

“What’s it worth?”.

“Well, you could spend $ 25 billion to get them another one”.

15

The moon is made of green cheese, as I recall from childhood days…