Two AXM shuttles in 1:288

[kwc]

Here they are, as promised in my introduction post...

I have two friends in Houston working for (two different) NASA contractors who I'm planning to visit in the fall, and I thought some shuttles would make some nice gifts. So I've started building two of Alfonso's (very nice looking) orbiters, in parallel, at 1:288 - half their intended scale; they are Discovery as STS-124 and Atlantis as STS-126.

I'm doing them with closed payload bays (I considered doing bays open, but I looked at some of the payload parts and they're already nearly microscopic at 1:144...) I probably won't do the external tanks and boosters, but I could change my mind later. Another idea I had was to make some kind of 2D stands for the finished shuttles that are shaped like the ET/SRBs.

Here is my progress so far...just the beginnings of the internal structure and the coverings over the payload bays. So far the two orbiters are identical, but I'll have to start paying close attention to the differing parts soon or I'll end up building Atlavery and Discontis.

[willygoat]

Nice looking shuttles! I personally think you're nuts for building these so tiny. I had a bit of trouble on the wings on a normal scale build of the Atlantis. I know that Lepercan will be happy to see this one. he is one of many Braille scale fans here :D

[milenio3]

LOL!! Very nice on the Atlavery and Discontis!!!

I'm also on for a 288th scale of an AXM shuttle, because my office space is limited, but I guess they should be just fine. Let's see how it turns.

[kwc]

Made some more progress this weekend...so the shuttles now have noses and cockpits.

The noses in particular were very fiddly, but I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out. They look good from about 2 feet away, passable at 1 foot, and slightly terrible in macro shots. It looks like the "thruster boxes" on the OMS pods in the rear will be even trickier, but at least they'll be flat surfaces.

[kwc]

Someone remind me to post more often! I decided to build the whole launch stacks after all, so two external tanks are underway. Here is last week's progress...


I skipped the reinforcing strips inside the tube but added some cardboard to the discs at both ends to make them more rigid.


Besides the difficulty of working with smaller parts, building in this scale also means the paper is relatively thicker, and that's part of the reason these seams are so prominent. Fortunately I think they'll be mostly covered by the SRBs on that side.


Here they are some time later with both ends closed. This is the point where I slightly regret not coloring the edges (which is something I've never tried to do before), though the flash of the camera definitely exaggerates the contrast. I also got a little impatient = careless = sloppy when it came to the tank bottoms. Whatever, they'll be hidden behind the orbiters anyway. (Post-It notes to keep track of which tank goes with which shuttle, because there are some slight differences between them.)


You can see in this picture that I did a poor job of following instructions...the seam on the nose of the tank is supposed to be aligned with the repressurization line (gray strip) below, so that the top part of the line (which has yet to be added) covers the seam and so that the markings at the black tip of the nose are positioned correctly. Some careful work with the x-acto knife fixed this problem without causing too much additional damage.


Finally, here are the tanks with properly finished noses and liquid oxygen feed lines. I made them by cutting the ends off 4 toothpicks (the round kind) and wrapping the paper parts around two of them end-to-end. I think the result is really a little thicker than it should be at this scale, but it looks good to me.

[willygoat]

Great stuff here! Those shuttle orbiter noses came out super well :D DId you use strips, or the provided tabs for the tanks? I would have gone nuts cutting tabs for the top and bottom of the tanks.

[APA-168]

Excellent work! Nice to see some shuttles taking shape. I am working on Columbia-only in full 1:144 scale. I just did away with all those pesky tabs :D Yours are looking much nicer than mine though.

[kwc]

Originally Posted by willygoat

Great stuff here! Those shuttle orbiter noses came out super well :D DId you use strips, or the provided tabs for the tanks? I would have gone nuts cutting tabs for the top and bottom of the tanks.

Thanks. I used the tabs, and I did start to get pretty sick of cutting them. There's more to be done for the boosters, but at least those parts are pretty much straight cones unlike the curves on the tanks (though there are twice as many of them...)

[willygoat]

¡Aye carumba! I would have gotten ill cutting all of those tiny tabs. Be sure to see your physician after you finish these. There may well be something wrong with you

[Retired_for_now]

Looking good oh tiny-fingered one!

Yogi (10 fat thumbs)