Space shuttle kit

[Mike]

Gday Gday,
Im building the revell Discovery and booster kit, and wondered if anyone can recommend the right paint for the large fuel pod, the instructions say mix wood brown with white, but i hate mixing paint, esp when its such a large piece ill likely run out and end up with mis matches.
if anyone can recommend an off the shelf colour id be grateful

Cheers
mike

[Lee S]

It's not a wood brown, but more of an "rusty iron" color. It's also not one color and the surface is very rough, so using an airbrush would look wrong. Here's some pics I was lucky enough to take a few years ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_str...7594193393837/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_str...7594193393837/

[saturnapollo]

Actually the colour varies as the tank gets exposed to UV light whilst standing out on the pad. It starts as a sort of butter scotch and gradually darkens. If you look at any photo showing two shuttles on both pads at the same time (a rare occurance) you can quite clearly see the difference in colour from one to the other, depending on how long they have been out there. I wouldn't take a photo in the VAB as a starting point because of different lighting conditions in there. You can see from the orange cast on the wall of the photo you took that there is an orange cast to the photo.

A funny thing happened at a model show once when I had my 1/72 full stack on display. This guy approached and started talking sbout the tank being covered in rust. I tried to explain to him that it wasn't rust but foam, but he insisted he knew as his company did work for NASA. Wouldn't listen to reason. I assume a couple of years later he would change his mind with the news a piece of foam had downed Columbia.

Keith

[DX-SFX]

I think 'tan' is probably a better description. They used to paint them white but then realised the paint wasn't necessary and it just added weight. There's a particularly brand of polyurethane casting resin (Hexel) that does exactly the same thing. It's starts off caramel in colour but goes a dark tan with age. I wouldn't be surprised if the urethane insulating foam sprayed on the outside of the tank is related.

That rust story is hilarious. Hasn't the guy heard of lightweight aluminium alloys and composites?

[Mike]

Thanks for the advice, and esp the photos,
i think ill go with rust....lololololol

thanks again guys, youve put a smile on my dial

[Mike]

Ok i bought the paints i needed today based on Lee's pics
i showed my wife this thread and the pics, and she said you are really lucky to have such good friends, to have helped you like this

i can only agree, thanks again ppl youve been very very helpful.

Those pics are really helpful Lee. Thank You

[Lee S]

Hey,
I'm currently uploading a bunch more from that trip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_str...7623563807354/
There's 103 pictures so give it atleast an hour after this post to go look.
A bunch more External Tank pictures, and under the shuttle (almost got to go 'up top' but didn't) plus some from the ISS assembly room (great to see most of these pieces now in orbit). It's just insane how complex the ISS is, take a look :-)


L

[Lee S]

New pics are uploaded, enjoy:




Goto the folder for the full res version:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_str...7623563807354/

[alfalfa]

Or you could just mix wood brown and white

[JMChladek]

Best shades I've found for use as a starting point are Floquil Railroad colors as the line has several orange, brown and yellow shades to use for the tanks. My first shuttle tank for an STS-107 stack used reefer orange mixed with a couple other colors as the main shade while the STS-117 stack I did over two years ago used a mixture of SP Daylight orange and UP orange with Freightcar brown.








No one exact formula will work for every shuttle tank as they all tend to change shade a little differently depending on how much time the stack spends at the launch pad before a flight. They start out almost butter yellow, darken to orange, then burnt orange, then brown. The earlier tanks before the foam formula changed slightly in the 1990s tended to darken more to a chocolate brown shade then the newer tanks. Some areas of the tank appear lighter because the foam rind has been sanded there to expose foam that hasn't yellowed yet, but then the process starts all over again with those spots darkening, same as the rest of the tank.

Best advice is to pick a picture of a shuttle mission and color match to that as close as you can. Plus, try to keep your paint mix simple. My STS-107 stack used something of a witches brew mixture which did cause me a couple headaches when I tried to match it for touchups later. When I did the STS-117 stack, the main colorings only mixed two shades and for the yellow bands I used Floquil UP Armor yellow. But in both cases, I was pretty close photo-wise to the shades I was trying to represent.