For many scale birds, like the Saturns, flat or *maybe* a touch of satin is going to be more true to scale.

Museum display items, especially those displayed outside, have, in many cases, been painted and repainted many, many times (I've been to KSC a number of times and have seen the 1b there...it falls in that category).

Also, many times, the particular paint scheme for said display artifacts is not always correct for the particular round depicted, and most times they will use a gloss because they think it probably 'looks better' to the public.

Not saying all gloss finishes are wrong, but as far as the Saturns go (V or 1b), gloss would not be in keeping with the actual flight articles.

There are some Apollo photo archives online that one can access to see flight rounds on the pad and one can get a pretty good impression from those the true finish characteristics.


Earl

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Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970