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Finally, the earthbound orbiter got its sleek white paint job, complete with thin black lines representing its tail rudder and other control surfaces.Īdding to the graphic appeal is a stylish black NASA “worm” logo: the typographical, future-facing masterpiece by New York design firm Danne & Blackburn used between 19. This was used in early tests before a nose section, tail structure and wings were added, and finished with aluminium sheeting for the outer skin. To build OV-098, engineers started by taking a spare Titan rocket motor case and some steel I-beams to make a skeleton spacecraft with roughly the same size, shape, weight and centre of gravity as the forthcoming Space Shuttle. We had the plans and designs and we assumed everything would be alright, but we were on a mission and we needed to be sure.” “Back in those days we didn’t have all that. “Nowadays you would use computer modelling to go through all the different lifting scenarios and stacking scenarios and make sure you had plenty of clearance,” explains Ron Tepool, now retired from NASA, but then a test director for the Space Shuttle’s main engines at Marshall. This fusion of physical and digital was a sign of the times: the year was 1977 and in cinemas Star Wars was wowing audiences across America with its cutting-edge combination of handcrafted sets, physical model spaceships and post-production digital effects. So while much of the Space Shuttle’s design and components would be electronic, it would strangely fall to a simple physical object to double check these seemingly simple points.
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The agency had already built a very delicate and very expensive flying testbed Space Shuttle – the Enterprise – but to make sure all various cranes, runway angles and width clearances wouldn’t damage it, engineers at Marshall decided to create a real life, full-sized but much more basic version.
![nasa space shuttle sale nasa space shuttle sale](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vgHKADdyJdvGUEZ4pm8qj-1200-80.jpg)
Making it all fit together on the very first attempt was crucial.
NASA SPACE SHUTTLE SALE PLUS
First conceived in the 1960s, the Space Shuttle was an incredibly complex set of technological achievements working together: a reusable orbiter, a massive external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters for extra thrust, plus the launch tower, cryogenic fuelling system and associated infrastructure. With various branches of NASA hard at work on America’s new spaceplane, it fell to engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center to make sure all the little details would work as planned when the real thing arrived. The story of this forgotten “shuttle” begins in the late 70s in Huntsville, Alabama. Hand painted in a sparse all-white livery, OV-098 (as it was designated) was a playful hint at things to come a future icon rendered like a designer kid’s toy. Lovingly handcrafted by engineers from NASA Test Shop 4650, this often overlooked piece of space history was cobbled together from steel beams, spare engine mounts, wood and aluminium. Long before America’s high-tech space shuttles were lofting astronauts and cargo into orbit and gliding back to Earth, a decidedly more basic version was forging a lonely path to space.