His work is on display in a small museum – not much bigger than those original Apollo astronaut capsules – right here at Mile Zero.
Much of Nick Proach’s work is out of this world.
Dawson Creek’s Proach is all about the art and detail behind creating space models. Although firmly rooted in real-world models, Proach is still about the final frontier.
No Star Destroyers or Klingon Birds of Prey here – Proach is all about real-world space, sea and air exploration.
Combining his passion for space exploration and history with his self-taught crafting skills over the years results in precise scaling and detailing that transforms a simple 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-fuel 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 literal, and figurative stars.
“I’ve been in the space program since I was a kid. Alan Shepherd, John Glenn and others,” he says.
In 1971, the younger Prouch built a model of the Apollo 15 lunar rover before the mission’s launch. He called several television stations where he was living in Toronto at the time.
“A week before the launch, Bob Conroy of CTV 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 site, along with experiments to use during CTV’s coverage of the moonwalks.
He took on a number of freelance contracts, and by 1994, Prouch was launching his spacecraft more fully and focused.
“I started collecting contracts.”
Some of these contracts include work with the Ottawa Aerospace Museum, NASA, the US Air Force, a quirky TV show and movie, aerospace companies including Space X, several astronauts, and a documentary produced by an actor who played astronaut Jim Lovell—one Tom Hanks.
Prouch also met and knew a number of astronauts, including some who actually walked on the moon.
“That first Apollo mission really grabbed me. Those first men on the moon turned me on from building cars and naval ships to spaceships.
Some of his space models have been in space, flying in or with their real counterparts.
“In 2002, NASA was working on components for the International Space Station, and some of these space station models built for NASA became training components,” says Prouch. His work flew on both the US Space Shuttle in 2002 and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2008.
“Today, 3D printers can really help create individual pieces and parts,” 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 102 Avenue. Small group tours can be arranged by prior arrangement.
For more than 50 years, Prouch has closely followed the space programs of Canada, the United States and Russia. He can make a model of any aerospace theme.
A close look at the patterns brings home the reality that astronauts have been in space – in an amount that equates to a large soup can. Re-entry into the atmosphere can be just as harrowing an experience as launch, with nothing but rocket fuel to send you into orbit.
“On re-entry, they are moving at about 25,000 miles per hour. Astronauts accept the risk and realize that they are test pilots and risk is something they don’t think much about. They were rolling with it and saying “we had to deal with what we had to deal with”. That’s what these guys are.”
In 2020, Prouch and his wife Connie took off from the Sunshine Coast and landed at Mile Zero.
“Another person 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.”
Prouch says that while there are quite a few space modelers out there, the market for people looking for these types of models is smaller.
“It’s quite a narrow market – but there are a number of groups that follow the story and know what happened. Quite a number of customers are in the US. We don’t build too many – then again they’re 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 built by Proach was a project for Expo ’86, a satellite measuring about 28 feet over.
In his shop, Prouch has models of the first rocket ever launched from Cape Canaveral, a model of the USSR’s Yuri Gagarin, an Apollo 9 spacecraft signed by the entire crew, a post-fall Gemini spacecraft, John Glenn’s Mercury spacecraft, and some more modern such as the Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Dragon II spacecraft and NASA’s new Space Launch System, a replacement for the Space Shuttle tentatively scheduled to take off on its first flight to the Moon in late August.
“It will do an unmanned trip around the moon, then in about 2 years a crew of four will go up,” he says.
I’m taking off.
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