Space Shuttle

Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the world's first spaceplane and coincidentally 60 years to the day that Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth. 

NASA Space Shuttle

On Sunday 12th April 1982, astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen, aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle, heralded a new era of commuting into space. I was just 17 years old at the time and had been following the development of the Space Shuttle for many years. I still have my copy of Hamlin's The Space Shuttle Handbook in which I wrote my name and date of purchase, January 1980, as was my habit back then, together with an inked summary of the first Shuttle 3 launches: April '81, November '81 and March '82

Revell's 1:144 scale Model of Space Shuttle Atlantis

The winged spacecraft we tend to refer to as the Shuttle is actually just called the Orbiter. The Space Shuttle is comprised three parts, the Orbiter, a solid fuel rocket to initiate the launch and two reusable boosters.

Entering into the spirit of exploration, NASA named the five Orbiters after famous ships that have charted the oceans of the world. Orbiter-102 was Columbia after the sloop which explored the mouth of the Columbia River in 1792. Orbiter-103, Discovery, is named after the vessel in which Henry Hudson searched for the north-west passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in 1610. Orbiter-104 was Atlantis, Orbiter-099 Challenger and Orbiter-105 Endevour all names of ships that logged millions of miles conducting research and exploring the oceans. Orbiter-101 Enterprise, named at the request of many fans of the Star Trek television series, was, however, the first to actually fly. Enterprise was used for Air-Launch Flight Tests released from the back of a Boing 747 airliner in1977, and although was planned to be made ready for space flight, this never happened.

 

That first space flight of Columbia which I documented in my Space Shuttle Handbook reads:

Shuttlenauts: Capt. John Young 50; Capt. Robert Crippen, 43 

Launched: Sunday 12 April 1981 (13:00) - OK - But 15 of 27,000 heat resistant tiles lost

Orbiting: Monday 13 April 1981 - Cargo doors open / operate OK; Tuesday 14 April 1981 - Cargo doors close OK; 36 Orbits completed

Landing: Tuesday 14 April 1981 (19:14) - OK - after 54 hour flight, 57 seconds ahead of schedule at Edwards Airforce Base in California's Mojave Desert

  

Columbia went on to deploy the Space Lab, the reusable laboratory developed by European Space Agency (ESA) during the early 1990s and then was tragically lost on 1st February 2003 at the end of its 28th mission over Texas approximately 16 minutes before landing. The cause of the disaster was a piece of polyurethane foam insulation which broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the reinforced carbon–carbon leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. When Columbia reentered the Earth's atmosphere, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart.

Space Shuttle Atlantis was first launched on 3 October 1985 to deploy a Department of Defense communications satellite but is most famous for performing the first Shuttle docking with the Russian Mir Space Station on 27 June 1985 and playing a instrumental role in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) between 19 May 2000 and 8 July 2011, the Space Shuttle's last ever mission.  It is a fact that without the Space Shuttle the ISS would never have been built. Indeed, following the grounding of all Shuttles after the loss of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003, assembly was held up for almost four years, while the Russians ferried crews back and forth to ISS. 

Shuttle loading bay opened showing the radiators and the ESA Space Lab

The Shuttle was born as a steppingstone to routine space transportation ferrying people, cargo, satellites and space station modules to low earth orbit, from where nuclear-powered rocket stages would send the next generation of astronauts to colonise the moon and deeper into space. It was believed that the Shuttle would be capable of making up to 60 flights a year but as the 1970s wore on it became apparent that such extravagant expectations could not be met. The hope that the Shuttle could be turned around within two weeks was impossible to fulfil and keeping the thermal insulation tiles in place and undamaged during launch and re-entry was to be a significant challenge to the programme.

My interpretation of Atlantis in Earth's orbit

The Shuttle lasted 30 years and spanned 3 distinct and separate phases:

Phase 1 1981 - 1986 :  the first 25 missions, in which an attempt was made to increase flight rates and carry all manner of government and commercial satellites; 

Phase 2 1988 - 1998 : the next 67 flights during which the shuttle was restricted to non-commercial payloads, flying military missions and docking with the Russian Mir space station; 

Phase 3 1998 - 2011 : the last 43 missions building the International Space Station, at last carrying out the role for which the Space Shuttle was designed. 

Atlantis ends the Space Shuttle era

My Model

For my model of the Space Shuttle, I used Revell's reboxed 2005 kit which was showing its age! The flash and moulding across the whole model was poor, making for a very frustrating and one of my most unenjoyable builds and unfortunately this reflects much of the final finish that I achieved.

I finally finished the model in the 2011 colours of Orbiter-104 Atlantis, as it would have been seen on its last visit to the ISS and the last ever flight of any Space Shuttle. I painted but did not bother to include the astronaut provided, it looked daft moulded in a 'standing to attention' position. The clear stand was equally unusable so I found another in my stash which, having decided to have the wheels up,  would do as a stopgap, and I could not be bothered to paint the nose in the suggested mid grey, perhaps I'll return to that at a later time. 

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The kit:

Brand: Revell

Title: Space Shuttle Atlantis
Number: 04544 (Also listed as 80-4544)
Scale: 1:144
Type: Full kit
Released: 2013 | Rebox (Changed box only)