Meet the BC man bringing Space Race history to life in a big way
At his workbench inside an autobody shop in downtown Dawson Creek, Nick Proch is putting the finishing touches to his latest creation – a scale replica of Skylab, the first American space station.
The model’s tiny solar array, command module, and telescope mount measure just 30 inches (76 cm) each, making it a tiny stand-in for the real Skylab, which measures 100 feet (30.5 m).
But it is made to millimeter precision dozens of other mThe initial spaceship that fills the display cases around it.
“Orbiting the Earth and going to the Moon… to me, it’s probably the biggest, most exciting adventure I’ve ever had,” Proch says.
Proch has spent more than 50 years recreating milestones in human space flight and building these special models for major customers around the world.
He grew up in Toronto during the height of the space race in the 1960s, glued to the TV as the first astronauts flew to new frontiers.
By the time he was 10, he was making models out of cardboard, plastic scraps, toothpicks, and toy tires.
He recalls, “I saw a picture of the lunar rover that they were going to use for the first time on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission.”
“I thought, ‘Hey, this is a neat, neat little hot rod. I have to make one of these.'”
A lifetime of watching astronauts push toward new frontiers has led a BC man to build something remarkable in an unexpected place. They’ve built a new space museum in downtown Dawson Creek in rural northeastern B.C. CBC’s Matt Preprost finds out more after talking to Nick Proch.
His small models quickly grew larger, and soon they were on national television — during coverage of the Apollo 15 moon landing in 1971, and again in 1975 for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, when American and Soviet crews shook hands in space.
“That’s basically what motivated me to keep going.”
Proch moved to BC in the late 1970s and settled in the Lower Mainland. He worked in real estate while the space kept him busy building vertical models.
By the mid-1980s, his reputation was growing, leading to large commissions for Vancouver’s Expo 86, including a 15-foot (4.5-metre) model of the American Space Station Freedom and a 28-foot (8.5-metre) version of Canada’s proposed MSAT satellite.
full time work
But Proch says everything changed in 1994 when he placed a small advertisement in an American magazine and attracted the attention of collectors, museums and aerospace contractors around the world.
Soon, he had enough work to work full-time. He hired a small team and built a company that counts NASA, the US Air Force and SpaceX among its customers.
“I thought maybe I could get a little commission,” he says.
“Things took off immediately.”
Each model is designed from original blueprints to match the actual spacecraft, from the length of the antenna to the shape of the rocket panels.
Parts are designed in Virginia, printed in the Netherlands, then shipped to Canada.
Canadian astronaut and retired Air Force Colonel Chris Hadfield – best known for commanding the International Space Station – has turned his attention to writing since leaving active service. With his three space missions under his belt, Hadfield is now traveling with his latest book, Final Orbit. CBC’s Brittany Greenslade sat down with him to talk about the stories, challenges and inspirations behind the new release.
Few people know Proch’s craftsmanship better than Houston, Texas-based space historian Robert Pearlman.
The two met in 1999 at the National Space Society convention in Houston, where Perlman saw something he had never seen before: an eight-foot-tall (2.4 m long) Saturn V rocket replica perched high above an exhibitor booth.
“You have to understand that this was long before 3D printing… no kit was that big,” says Perlman, founder of . collect space,
“The old choice was you either go to the Hollywood prop house, or go to Nick’s.”
Pearlman has several Proach models in his office, including Canadarm.
“Not everyone can have a museum in their backyard where they have a real Saturn V or a real Apollo command module or a lunar module. Scale models are kind of the stepping stone to that.”
Back at his museum, Proch guides visitors to a detailed Apollo 11 lunar module signed by Buzz Aldrin, a model he first built as a high school student more than 50 years ago.
Nearby is a detailed model of Artemis, NASA’s next crewed mission around the Moon, which is set to launch in February 2026 with a Canadian astronaut aboard.
“We are adding more and more Canadian content to the museum because Canada has a very rich history in aerospace that no one knows about.”
In about four months, Jeremy Hansen will launch with the Artemis II mission. The space pioneer met elementary students visiting the Canadian Space Agency and answered their questions about the launch.
However, among the exhibits is one of his most prized possessions: his own mission patch flown on Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2002.
It traveled into orbit with one of their astronaut training models, and traveled more than 4.1 million miles (6.5 million kilometers) and 171 orbits before returning to them.
“I never heard a word about it – until a few months later, on a Friday night in December, this courier arrived with an envelope,” he says.
“When I opened the envelope there was that patch wrapped in cellophane along with a certificate that the crew had flown that crest during their mission.”
Proch and his wife Connie moved to Dawson Creek in 2020 to be closer to their children.
The historian hopes that young children visiting the museum will see his models and be inspired to create their own.
“Especially these days, it’s very important to do this,” he says.
“Getting them off the phone, getting them off the computer, and doing something completely different, because that used to be a core activity. I mean, you did it all the time.”
