Accessory: Space Shuttle

My guess would be this is most-likely a licensing issue. Although they certainly pay enough royalties to baseball teams, Frosty and other lines so you'd think they could work something out with NASA. 

Agree. If I remember correctly MTH had NASA related rolling stock.  I had the good fortune in 2000 to witness a launch up close and personal (even stood next to the stack the afternoon before they lit it up). What an awesome experience. With today's technology in modeling I would think it could be an extraordinary accessory...ahem....

Now that all the shuttles have been retired folks may start to miss them and it may become more attractive to the train manufacturers to make something shuttle related?

I believe MTH still has NASA offerings? Wasn't there just a Rocket train or something like that in a recent catalog? Maybe they will do something with the shuttle?

It'd be kinda big:

Rusty

No licensing issues as it's a government agency and your tax dollars at work. Anyone can make and sell an orbiter model.

If you see my photos below, you'll see I have more than a passing interest in the orbiters...

Rusty Traque is correct.

The Booster sections carried by Train are at the Max diameter that will fit through the tunnels and right of way for the train route.

A 1:48 Scale Shuttle would be 46.05 inches nose to tail

Body Dia. of 7.125 inches, wingspan of 19.5 inches.

I think a Saturn V would be more in line with my RR timeframe but that is a bit too tall to fit on the layout unless you have really tall ceilings. (90.75" (7' 6.75") tall not including launch pad / crawler)

I wouldn't mind a shuttle anyway but mine will be a Flying model, I already picked out the kit I want.

It's a 1/64 scale full stack. With RC control for the orbiter flight back.

Since I'm already certified for Hi Power rocketry it's a matter of time and money.

Wouldn't mind a 1:48 one but no one offers it.

Or, you could always buy the model made for the Hess truck some years back. They're always at shows.

If you're refering to a Saturn V, you can get one if you have the money to spend:
http://www.spacemodel.com/Satu...8_scale_p/ap-svl.htm

I've seen all three existing Saturn Vs in recent years as well as the almost-100% replica vertical one at Huntsville. It's a thrill that never gets old, walking into a building and looking at one sitting horizontal...

 FYI, this Saturn V back end is from a different stack than the one above! I need to find my shots of the one at Houston, which is the worst preserved and displayed...

LOL, that is one giant 1/48 rocket, I would have to cut a hole in the basement ceiling for it to fit on the layout. $7,000 is out of my range.

Or get one from the Air and Space museums but would probably be HO sized or smaller but might fit better anyway. some of the "toys" they have are metal and nicely detailed. If there is really a lot of interest here, I'll go pick up a few and post pics. And mail them out.

What Rusty Traque and Russell said.

Assembling the SRB only from the MTH SRB set is probably close to 3 feet tall.

Add the Shuttle and the External Tank, and that is quite a bit of real estate. 

If going full scale, you might have room for a short piece of track and a track mobile on your layout when all is said and done.

-Dave

Actually, the Huntsville Saturn V was never a flight-worthy article. It was built for ground virbration testing. the ones at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers were the ones built for Apollo 19 and 20 for the most part. Each have various leftover sections from the last 3 Moon mission which never flew. Several pieces from one of those three missions were instead used for Skylab.

As for the obriters, the shuttle program was doomed the moment of the foam strike on STS-107. If it wasn't for the need for the orbiters to complete the International Space Station, that would've been it and the program would have ended in 2003.

FYI, there was foam strike even worse early in the program that easily could have destroyed the Atlantis on STS-27. That strike ripped several underside tiles to shreads, including knocking one completely off. The only reason Atlantis didn't break up on re-entry was the missing tile just happened to be immediately under a heavy antenna mount. Otherwise, the superheated gasses on re-entry would have for certain burned right through and destroyed the orbiter as Columbia broke up several years later.

Robert "Hoot" Gibson was the commander on this mission. He and Canadarm operator Mike Mullane (who wrote of all this in his outstanding book, "Riding Rockets") were both convinced they were going to die on re-entry. NASA, dealing with a secret DoD sat launch from Atlantis, wasn't allowed to see the video that the crew could see of the scarred orbiter underside, so they told the crew it was just a trick of light and shadow for all the white they were seeing on the video of the normally black underside and that they had no problem.

I recently talked with Gibson about this and he wouldn't tell me what he was going to tell Houston just before the orbiter came apart, but he knew what caution/arning lights he'd get from a burnthrough and knew he's have about 60 seconds to tell NASA what he thought of them.

I am a 'space' fan too.....both real and model. But my 1/72 scale model is WAY to big to display........I can not imagine any 1/48 scale components even!!!  The boosters are the only thing that MIGHT be modeled in 1/48......and they'd be along the lines of the big transformer loads MTH makes.....maybe bigger. Can't have many of those!!!

Endeavour last OCT when it was in the horizontal position.  Too big to capture in one photo with the camera I had. Bigger in real life than I could ever imagine!! See one if you can.

For those interested, Williams did two different space shuttle sets:

p51,

I love the grin. It says it all..and why wouldn't you. Thank you for your service!

Oh yeah, the model thing...It's too d%$# big to model in 1/48.

One of my favorite launch photos-STS-128 at night.

I still have my packet from NASA, perhaps 1961 when I inquired about the path to become an astronaut. Lost my 20-20 in high school. Oh well.

Certified?  Certified?  You're supposed to get certified?  Uh oh, may have to be out of circulation for a little bit!

All kidding aside, high power rocketry would be an awesome hobby.  You are correct, just takes time & money.  

You need to get with some of the large scale guys and build a rail mobile Peace Keeper. With Putin re-starting his rail program, Uncle Same may need your help!  Just contact the Sec Def....... Oh never mind!

I got to go to Udvar-Hazy a couple weeks ago.  I was amazed how large the shuttle really is! I agree with the others, I think it would be a little large unless you have a huge layout!

Heh, Ya, my wife is always saying they are gonna put me on a list.

I reply, "They are making new lists just for me."

And I'm a member of a club, some of the MIT guys come up to our field for Rocket projects. So Ya, We have some serious Rockets launching there.

For those interested in a 1:48 Scale Saturn 5 go to Sherrys Hot rockets and get a kit for under $500. Sherry also has a Full stack Shuttle kit in 1:62 scale for $289.

If you want a nice Saturn 5 that is a bit smaller go to Apogee rockets for the 1:70 scale model for $287. This is a museum quality kit, it's gorgeous and you can fly it (minimum altitude) without getting any certification. It's 62.2" tall.

Those are all Real Flying model Rockets. They use Real Rocket engines.

Contact me via email if you want more info.

There are smaller kits for less money as well. Plastic, not flyable.

My brother was a Peacekeeper ICBM launch officer in the 90s, and they were getting ready for Peacekeeper Rail Garrison. They even had a section of FE Warren AFB picked out for a large facility to house the trains and missiles, apparently based on the ground launched cruise missile setup (just on a much larger scale). I even have several of the contractor patches for the program after all these years.

One of the cars is at the USAF museum in Ohio today.

I don't want a space shuttle, and a Peacekeeper would be nice, yes.  But I 've wanted to build a Titan I missile being transported on flat cars.  It would be about 2.5 inches in diamter so would fit on a flatcar, but it would be about 25 inches high in scale, so I'd have to break it into stages I guess, but that would be cool.  I think it would really look nice. 

Seen the newest Godzilla movie, have you?

Seriously, they never shipped missiles like that. I laughed out loud when I saw a complete missile being shipped to go nuke Godzilla in that film. Have none of these people heard of stages or removing the RVs (re-entry vehicles)?

If I was gonna put a rocket on my layout, I would probably go with 1:72 scale.  I would set it up at the back of the layout to get a little bit of forced perspective.

Jim

p.s. If you want a prototypical rocket on a train, one choice would be a Russian Soyuz.