Shuttle Launch Pad and Tower

Well here's a link to some good ref pics

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/launch-complex39-toc.html

and to a pdf of the tower kit's instructions

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/kitplans/revell4911.pdf

I'll look through the gov. archive here on campus and see what we have.

They sell it for $175 here:  http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php

I doubt that you could scratchbuild it for less than that.

And I'd priced out assembling the launch tower for a 1/48th Mercury Redstone years ago. That was when there was only the 1/48th Glencoe Explorer 1 and 1/48th Revell Mercury capsule available. The very good resin conversion set to turn the Explorer 1 into a Mercury launch vehicle wasn't available yet. (This was a couple of years Before Internet. )

I figured I could kitbash two of those ten-buck Glencoe Explorer 1's (for the extra length required) and top it with the Revell Mercury capsule to make the vehicle. I had all of those in my stash, for a total investment of about $35.00.

All I had of the launch tower was a couple of pictures, but those were enough to get an idea of what I'd need. So I marked up my copy of the Plastruct catalog. By the time I was about halfway through, my subtotal was well over $100.00!

Back in the stash went my two Glencoe Explorer 1's and the Revell Mercury capsule.

can we see your pics of the model

infimurf, that is one magnificent build! I'll bet it's enormous, too. Are you donating it to a museum when you're done, or are you adding an extra wing on your house for it?

Here are a couple of pictures which are similar to the ones I used when I started (and never finished) pricing out my 1/48th Mercury Redstone launch diorama which I never built:

http://www.mostlyclassics.net/images/mercuryredstonelaunch.jpg

http://www.mostlyclassics.net/images/mercuryatpad.jpg

I had priced out about half the Plastruct needed to make just the launch tower (the red and gray structure) and was up around $150.00 when I quit pricing. This was maybe 15 years ago. In today's prices, my guess is raw materials for the launch tower, the yellow cherry-picker, and the base with its tracks and other stuff, would put me back around $750.00.

And, as you can see, the Mercury Redstone launch complex was much simpler than the Shuttle's. And much smaller, too, even taking into account 1/48th versus 1/144th scale.

If your heart is set on building the Shuttle launch pad and tower in 1/144th, grit your teeth and shell out the $175.00 for the Revell model. Then be prepared to do lots of accurizing. But the Revell model, even for $175.00, is a screaming steal!

I always hated when someone would say that they picked up some rare kit for peanuts, but THIS TIME, I get to brag! 'Got the Revell RSS/FSS kit, still sealed in plastic, at a garage sale for $15.

I've started building the minimal orbiter/EFT/SRBs/MLP combination. 'Have the enlarged Google images of 39B, as well as numerous photos from the NASA site. 

The C-T plans are done.

The MLP is about 60% done, at this point, mostly from .060 styrene. Side 2 is the tricky one, as I could only find one good photo of that side. The other 3 sides have photos in abundance. The TSMs and water piping are the biggest challenges remaining on the MLP.

Randy Lee Anne

Hey, shipgirl, you really lucked out!

One was offered on eBay a couple of weeks ago and fetched $200.00.