Space Shuttle flying model
 

I have a pretty nice Estes Mercury Redstone flying model.
I am finishing up on a pretty nice Estes Saturn V flyer.
I am going to get started on the Boyce Gemini Titan flying model which looks pretty nice.
My question is does anyone know of a pretty good semi scale flying model of the Space Shuttle with boosters that is capable of flight. The shuttle itself does not need to be a glider.
The Estes kit is nice but not very accurate as compared to the other kits I have built.
I am not a rivet counter but I want something more realistic than the Estes.

Rob George Gassaway's house... :-) (He has built more Space Shuttle models, many of them scratch-built, than probably anyone else in the hobby & sport [thinking about it, he might have a kit he'd sell--he's here on YORF--but I can't speak for him, of course].) Also:

Since you don't require the winged Orbiter to be able to glide (the Space Shuttle proper is actually the whole stack, or--later in flight--the Orbiter and the External Tank [ET]), that gives you more options. The PMC (Plastic Model Conversion--that is, adapting a plastic model kit to fly as a scale model rocket) route may be the easiest. Plastic kits of the complete stack (Orbiter, ET, and SRBs [Solid Rocket Boosters]) are available in several scales; 1:288, 1:200, 1:144, 1:100, and maybe 1:72 and/or 1:48 scale, and:

With such PMC Space Shuttle models, the easiest--and most reliable--motor arrangement is to have a single motor mount tube, installed off-axis in the ET (off the ET's center-line axis, just below the Orbiter [as viewed from the model's rear]) because of the model's mass distribution). The ET's ogival nose section (its LOX tank) would serve as the nose cone. In larger-scale models, it would be advisable to create a smaller-volume parachute compartment by installing a bulkhead inside the ET, through which the motor mount tube would protrude; this would make parachute ejection easier for the motor's ejection charge. Plus:

For stabilization in flight, clear plastic fins (affixed to removable [for display] clear plastic rods or tubes) would fit--the rods or tubes, that is--up into the SRB nozzles (a friction fit in the SRBs would suffice, for transparent rods or tubes). As an alternative to the transparent rods or tubes, rather thick clear sheet plastic strips could be cut and glued together, to form "+" cross-section booms that would fit inside the SRB tubes. The transparent fins could be cut out separately and be affixed to the booms, *or* the fins could be integral with--cut out as part of, that is--the two sections of each boom. (Because of the Shuttle stack's off-center shape, the removable-for-display, finned rods, tubes, or booms are needed for the same reason a skyrocket needs its trailing stabilization stick; the fins on the rear ends of these stick-like trailing stabilizers provide additional stabilization forces, and they also permit the trailing portion of each unit to be shorter than it would otherwise have to be.) As well:

Estes' 1:162 scale Space Shuttle kit (Cat. No. 1284, see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/nostalgia/95est36.html and http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/nostalgia/81estb.html [and *here* https://estesrockets.com/wp-content...ACE_SHUTTLE.pdf are its instructions--they show the off-center, ET-installed motor mount with the smaller-volume parachute compartment--plus the removable-for-display, fin-equipped trailing stabilization booms--that I described above for PMC Space Shuttle models]) is now rare, but you might be able to find one out there if you search diligently--although its price might be up in "Ouch!" territory. (I'd love to see Estes re-issue this kit, at least at intervals). Its Orbiter has wider-than-scale wings to improve its glide performance (they give it a lower wing loading), but the rest of the model--including the rest of the Orbiter--is accurate and well-detailed.

I hope this information will be useful.

Not many flying shuttle models around these days, if any. The only other one I can think of is the Dr. Zooch space shuttle, but that one is discontinued also now I believe.


Earl

Cowboy,

If you like your Boyce kit, then you'll need their ET/SRB set. It's not a kit, you do the design work. The ET is BT-101 and the SRBs are ST-18. You'll need to come up with an orbiter in approximately 1/83 scale, maybe the Guillows or the bigger Estes glider (part of a starter set from 30 years ago) is big enough, but I haven't checked. That's the best you're going to do today.

Earl's right, Shuttle stacks are tough to build (well), tough to fly and so there are few kits.

Somebody on Facebook is scratchbuilding one with a BT-60 ET and offset motor mount like the Estes model. He said he was basically eyeballing everything from pictures. Looks like a BB nosecone, likely with a paper cone and filler to take it to a point. The SRB's look like they have cones from the Yankee or whatever is out now that is BT-20.

Edit: Found it. Hope the link works for you.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/483...858497247958764



.

Sorry I'm a bit late checking into this thread.

My first shuttle full stack was 1/110 scale. Orbiter was sort of crude balsa, but was very light and glided nicely (I have rarely seen the Estes 1/162 shuttle's orbiter glide at all). To me, the 1/162 kit was just too small.

I feel 1/110 is close to optimal for flight, with BT-55 SRB's and 3" ET, as at that size and weight (if built with weight in mind), it will fly nicely on a D12.

I know 1/100 is preferred in comparison with other 1/100 kits, to stand all together. But for models that FLY, I don't think the scale factor compared to any other model is as important for optimal flying and practical factors of assembly and cost and reliability.

In 2009, I made another 1/110 model. This time, with the Guillow's foam orbiter, which I'd used as a piggyback orbiter on sport boosters before. It flew well too, on D12 power and also E9.

It was a prototype for a kit, but I never ended up producing it. Some more info:

http://georgesrockets.com/GRP/Scale/Shuttle2009.htm





Shuttles at 1/72 size end up so big and heavy and draggy that they pretty much need a G motor. Although my 1/72 shuttle stacks flew on F motors, mostly the original Aerotech F25 (close to 80 N-sec). But those were made lighter than some other models would be. I mean, the NCR 1/72 shuttle absolutely needed a G40 to fly, due to its' mass.

My 1979 contest shuttle, which won scale at NARAM and 10th at the 2002 World Championships.


I don't have any good video of that shuttle. But here's a test flight of the 1998 boilerplate after many years of trying to get a shuttle to work with SRB's that sepped and so forth. Warning - the sound is loud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQbt2VoIuZo

"fun fact" - the orbiter was 14 years old then, built in 1984. Used a vac-formed orbiter nose grafted to the balsa orbiter. My contest model was built the same way. Note the steering was by the lower part of the rudder, not mixed elevons (elevons were used for elevator only on my model). Orbiters can be steered beautifully using the lower part of the rudder, mixed ailerons do not fly smooth.



When it worked 5 times in one day, and 3 times another day, within a span of about a month, I knew I finally had all the problems solved. After so many other boilerplates and even trying different scales, and finding out clustering was not worth screwing with. Also part of it was methods I had learned thru those years, plus technology that did not exist in the early 1980's. The ET nose has a flight computer in it, made and programmed by Jay Marsh, in control of a lot of things (such as SRB sep after burnout was detected, and ET ejection charges) except for the orbiter sep which was manually by R/C.

And, here's a link for the shuttle pages on my website. Two involve my models, the last is a trove of shuttle data.

http://georgesrockets.com/GRP/Scale/SHUTTLE.htm

Last thing, a video by Greg Warren showing my 1/60 scale obiter using a very special piggyback booster, powered by a G12. Glides nicely. It also used rudder for steering, so it turns smooth like the real thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_cxNTnIYsA

Nice Shuttle Stack, George.
Your projects amaze me.

Thank you, George, for sharing your experientially-gained knowledge with all of us! I'm not surprised at which R/C control surfaces disposition you found to work best, although I'd never read it anywhere, with regard to scale Orbiter models. (John Young once remarked that the [full-scale] Orbiter's elevons comprise a large enough percentage of the Orbiter's total wing area that using the elevons, particularly in pitch, made large changes in the wings' total lift, and thus needed to be deflected as sparingly as possible in pitch.) Also--as with the rudder of the F-104 Starfighter (whose vertical tail/rudder and wings/ailerons are of comparable area, and thus effectiveness)--the full-size Orbiter's rudder (acting like a "third wing with an aileron") could also tend to cause a roll rather than a yaw motion, which your models' low-set "partial rudder" prevents. Well, it could have been worse for us, in this way:

Had NASA selected Chrysler's SERV SSTO (Single-Stage-To-Orbit) ballistic vehicle to be the Space Shuttle (see: https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf...HT0ND94Q4dUDCAw ), we'd have had to--no doubt with many "ker-splats" along the way--perfect delayed ignition-timing retro-rocket scale models (although SERV's optional nose-mounted MURP spaceplane would have given SERV scale kits a scale boost-glider as well).

The Centuri Space Shuttle was close to Chrysler's concept.
I found the Space Shuttle to be fairly lousy but a Flying DODGE (or DeSoto) would have been much WORSE.

Which one--their SST Shuttle (sort of like Estes' Orbital Transport), or their Phase B two-stage, winged reusable one (with the rear-ejecting motor mount inside the straight & stubby-winged orbiter, acting as a front-motor boost-glider)? Chrysler's SERV was a wingless, SSTO vehicle, and:

For carrying its optional MURP spaceplane on its nose (for crew transport to and from a space station, along with small amounts of up/down cargo), SERV would fly a suborbital ascent trajectory and make a jet engines-braked vertical landing. (It also would have made such a vertical landing when flying to/from orbit in its payload-only configuration.) With the MURP spaceplane serving as a second stage, it would inject itself into orbit while the SERV vehicle--after acting as the first stage of the SERV/MURP combination--would re-enter and make a vertical touchdown, either downrange of the launch site or, like some Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stages (and outer boosters)--*at* the launch site, after making a boost-back maneuver.