1:144 External Tank / SRB’s Assembly

You need: White glue, a craft knife, ruler, tweezers, a cutting mat, and very, very important……..PATIENCE. For beginners is best to learn basic techniques for papermodeling. You can check in the Internet. The following pages show a sequence of photos as a guide to build this model.

Glue the “reinforcers” parts on the back of this page.

These parts need to be at a same distance one another and leaving a small clearance at the top and bottom of the page, about half an inch (15 mm or so)

Give shape to the page, make a tube and insert circles “C” on both ends leaving a clearance of about half an inch, too.

Glue part B1 at the bottom of ET.

Glue the “intertank” part starting at the right side of the page. Match it with this line.

This is how the ET bottom looks at this point. Notice the silver detail protruding from the rest. Do not put glue yet on that part.

Start building the Ojive or the upper portion of the External Tank. The rings go one on top of the other, carefully matching one another. Start from the base ring.

IMPORTANT: All rings are to be aligned with their lines of connection. Match the Ojive line with this part.

Now build the bottom of the ET. Start with this ring. Notice that B1 teeth will not be covered by first ring. The circles with the dots are a detail from mission STS-1. Not seen on current ET’s.

Finally put the last part aligned with the center of the whole tube.

Now start the attachment structure. Has one part that is glued on the back of the other one.

The yellow triangle is optional to be cut off with a blade.

At this point, you can add the tip of the tank and the “fuel line” part.

The LO2 line is the long white tube crossing the whole ET. To match the width at this scale, you can use 3 swabs, remove the cotton and clean the sticks. Measure with the “paper part” and glue them on it.

Glue the attachment structure. Align it.

Put the 2 tubes under the crossbeam. The one with the black stripe goes to the left and the other tube goes on the right.

Now, the bipod structure. Finally, put the LO2 cover.

Start with the Solid Rocket Boosters. The building process is very straightforward. These “reinforcers” are glued the same way as the ones from the ET.

Glue the “connector”part inside the SRB top end. See the Reference page of my site to see how these dots are aligned.

Glue cylinders 1 and 2 on top of the crossbeam to hold the Space Shuttle.

The SRB’s are glued to the tank at the indicated places. Enjoy building the Stack configuration!

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