shuttle_06

    A photograph I personally took of a 1:1 scale mock-up Space Shuttle, built in 1991 by Carrington Engineering in Newcastle Australia, with the full permission of NASA (which included access to real shuttle design plans!)

    The company built two of these, for (I think) AU1990$300,000 each, primarily as a demo of the company's designers. The first was sold to a businessman in Japan who did the dodge deliberately not paying the custom importing costs so that it got impounded by the authorities, he refused to pay the money that was owed, and who then later bought via an intermediary at auction for less than the cost of the scrap metal. It was to have become an attraction at an amusement park ("Space World" in Kitakyushu, www.spaceworld.co.jp/english/, I believe.)

    The second, a mock-up of the Challenger, sent the company broke after another bit of misfortune. What remained of it became a road-side eyecatch for a Hunter Valley Rose Farm.

    (If the picture quality is a bit pecular, it's because there were taken with a pre-digital camera about 17 years ago.. The 600dpi raw scans are available on request.)

    More photos at: hunter.apana.org.au/~cjb/Image/Newcastle_Space_Shuttle/

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