MOC: Space shuttle transport

[dr_spock]

Presenting my space shuttle transport MOC.

It's an adventure moving the space shuttle orbiter from the manufacturer's plant in Palmdale, California to Edwards Air Force Base.

[lightningtiger]

Excellent truck 'dr_spock' - great designing.......

I can see where you got the ideas from, right ?

I'm a conformist! 'dr_spock' I'm a conformist! !

[Ralph_S]

Presenting my space shuttle transport MOC.

It's an adventure moving the space shuttle orbiter from the manufacturer's plant in Palmdale, California to Edwards Air Force Base.

This is a pretty neat idea and a nice truck.

I'm pretty sure NASA used to have trucks for this, but can't find a picture. The only pictures I did find are a series of Buran (The Russian space shuttle) being carted into a museum.

This does show that the shuttle model -even though it is intended for minifigs, is built to a much smaller scale than most of LEGO's city vehicles. This is for understandable reasons, but I reckon that it needs to be at least 50% longer to be proportional to the truck. Short of building yourself a bigger Shuttle or building a much smaller truck, there's really nothing you can do about this.

One thing that you might want to consider is adding a few more wheels. Many heavy-duty flatbed trailers have an extra wheel bogey between them and the truck that pulls them. Check out this one for instance. It would make your truck look yet a bit more rugged.

Cheers,

Ralph

[sram]

Now you need a Minifig size model of a Boeing 747.

[Ralph_S]

Now you need a Minifig size model of a Boeing 747.

That would make one hell of a MOC. Lego is way ahead of us, though.

[prateek]

Great truck. You should make an oversized load sign and a police escort for it too

This is a pretty neat idea and a nice truck.

I'm pretty sure NASA used to have trucks for this, but can't find a picture. The only pictures I did find are a series of Buran (The Russian space shuttle) being carted into a museum.

I found a die-cast model of one here:

[dr_spock]

Thanks guys.

Lightningtiger, looks like 6346 came out during my dark ages. Such 4 wide sweetness.

Ralph_S, the link didn't seem to work. It brought up a map of North America for some reason. Are you referring to one of those inter-dolly or whatever they are called? I found this picture on the Internet of a space shuttle with a truck. It's huge compared to the truck. Hmm, maybe I should try a smaller 4 wide truck for the MOC.

sram, do you think the 787 Dreamliner set can be MOC into a 747?

prateek, I'll see if I can figure out how to print some graphics for it and add an escort service.

[Ralph_S]

Great truck. You should make an oversized load sign and a police escort for it too

I found a die-cast model of one here:

I too found several pictures of toy trucks with shuttles, but they too tend to have shuttles that are too small compared to the size of the shuttle. The truck that dr_spock found a picture of is the one I had in mind.

Ralph_S, the link didn't seem to work. It brought up a map of North America for some reason. Are you referring to one of those inter-dolly or whatever they are called? I found this picture on the Internet of a space shuttle with a truck. It's huge compared to the truck. Hmm, maybe I should try a smaller 4 wide truck for the MOC.

How odd. The link is correct, but somehow the page itself links you to that map. It didn't yesterday.

This is the site:

http://www.lakeregiontrailers.com/

if you click 'low boy trailers' you see several examples.

Anyway, I don't know what the things are called, but there's an extra set of wheels between the tractor and the trailer.

I'd expect the real trucks to be dwarfed by the shuttle. It is about the size of a small airliner (say a Boeing 737) after all.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Ralph_S]

NASA apparently have a new truck to carry the Orbiter:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/round_trip_with_endeavour.html

Further towards the bottom of the page you'll also find some spectacular shots of the Orbiter on top the 747 Shuttle Transport Aircraft.

Cheers,

Ralph

[sram]

sram, do you think the 787 Dreamliner set can be MOC into a 747?

Great idea, this would look awesome.

[dr_spock]

Lets try it with a smaller 4 wide tractor and some escorts rolling through town.

[Ralph_S]

Lets try it with a smaller 4 wide tractor and some escorts rolling through town.

I'm normally not a huge fan of 4-wide trucks, but for this purpose it makes a big difference. It makes the shuttle look a lot bigger. Very nice.

Cheers,

Ralph