Convair Space Shuttle (1959)

Scale: 1/160
Initial Release: 1959
Medium: Styrene
Kit Rarity (Original Release): 5
Space Pursuit Release): 5
Revell Re-Release: 3
Atlantis Re-Release: 1

About the Design

Yet one more conceptual spacecraft designed from prolific aerospace engineer Krafft Ehricke. (The man was a one-man space program.) This 1959 release accurately predicted the function -- but not the form -- of the actual U.S. Space Shuttle. This five-man spacecraft was to be launched via a disposable booster and achieve orbit using a drop-away second stage.  Before returning to Earth, the orbiter would drop its third-stage "power unit" and return home as an unpowered glider. The manned module was, one assumes, reusable.

About the Kit

Released briefly in the late 1950s, the Convair Space Shuttle was re-released as a retro space "pirate ship" in Revell's funky "Space Pursuit" set of 1968. It resurfaced again in 1996 as part of Revell/Monogram's "Special Subjects Program," a "nostalgia" campaign aimed at aging Baby Boomers, and was subsequently re-released in 2019 by Atlantis Models.

This is a build-up of the 1990's re-issue.