World Space Museum™ is our name for the series of incredibly detailed, snap-together model replicas of historical rockets, satellites, landers, and explorers first released in Japan in 2003. The series was created by ArcLight Corporation, and the models were produced by Kaiyodo, with the direction and assistance of Toshio Okada.

The U.S.-based team at ArcLight USA, Inc., is making these models available for the first time in English.

Toshio Okada

Mr. Toshio Okada jokingly refers to himself as an Otaku which in Japanese means a nerd or geek. Otakus are the creators of animation works such as Sailor Moon and Pokemon that are famous all over the world. In fact, Mr. Okada has lectured on Otaku studies at Tokyo University, M.I.T. in the United States, and at the Bande Dessinée Convention in Paris, France. He assembled and supervised the Japanese experts and space fans who provided the written material and research necessary to produce these spectacular models.

Yoh Morinaga

Our marvelous space history cartoons were drawn by Yoh Morinaga who is a renowned illustrator in Japan respected for his comic strips and television 3D figures. Mr. Morinaga is also a devoted modeler with a dedication to accuracy. His detailed illustrations were a key part of Kaiyodo’s mega-hit in Japan – World Tank Museum™. (We now offer these models in English, too! Click here to learn more.)

Nick Veronico

Mr. Nicholas A. Veronico has written more than 20 books on aviation and is the American aerospace expert assisting us with the English language edition of WSM. Mr. Veronico worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) where he wrote about Supercomputing, Life Sciences, Astrobiology, and computational physics (computational fluid dynamics, turbulence research, electromagnetic scattering). Currently he is editor of In Flight USA and compiles the information for our Space Log column on this web site. Go here to see Mr. Veronico’s books.

U.S.-based Design Team

The core U.S.-based design team at ArcLight USA, Inc. consists of Dana Lombardy (Project Manager & Editor), and Nicolas Solberg (Art Director & Layout Artist), with help from Mark Schumann (Layout Artist) and Rick Drennan (Illustrator). Bill Jaffe is our primary Sales Representative.