luke strawwalker
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WAAAY back on page 1, I did a WHOLE BUNCH of paint and color tests for the shuttle ET... I used the "Zooch method" as it was then known (using three different rattlecan colors applied in "dust coats" over each other to blend together) and some others as well... Even then the originally recommended colors for the Zooch Method were nearly impossible to find by then (thanks to the EPA VOC regs forcing old Krylon off the market) and thus I experimented...
The thing with the ET color is, they were never quite the same... Of course the first two shuttle flights used tanks painted white... This served a few purposes, among them 1) protecting the foam insulation on the ETs on these early flights, since it was well understood before hand that these flights would likely spend MONTHS out on the pad in the weather before actually being launched-- so covering the foam with paint would minimize UV weathering and stuff of the foam... 2) the paint also charred in a pattern showing the shock wave impingement off the orbiter nose and SRB nose cones during flight, the exhaust gas plume recirculation at the base of the orbiter, and the ET's nose heating itself during flight (parts of the ET heat up to over 400 degrees in flight due to air friction, especially where supersonic shockwaves shed by the orbiter and SRB nosecones hit the tank walls, and the tank nose itself...) The paint, when applied, weighed about 800 pounds or so, plus all the manhours necessary to apply it, so after the first two flights, the paint was deleted, so that extra payload could be carried instead.
SO, the tank can be white, if one desires the "maiden voyage" shuttle look... as for the 133 flights that flew with the orange/brown tanks, a lot of the actual coloration depends greatly on how long the tank sat out in the hot Florida sun on the pad or in processing... The tanks are actually sprayed with a foam material not unlike the 'foam in a can' stuff we get at the hardware store for various jobs... When it is first applied, it's a very light, creamy color... shortly after being exposed to the sun, it starts to turn the more recognizable orange-brown color, and the longer its exposed to solar UV, the darker it becomes... I broke a chunk of spray foam that had oozed from a corner of my brother's garage, and had been exposed to solar UV for a couple years, and took a picture of it for one paint test... one can clearly see that the unexposed foam (that was inside the corner of the building out of the sun) remained a creamy tan color, while the exterior surface of the foam "blob" had been weathered into an orange-brown color, with the brownish-orange being on the side getting the most sun, turning oranger and lighter as the surface curved around away from the sun...
SO, if you want your shuttle to look like one of those shuttle missions that got delayed for months and ended up sitting on the pad or moved back and forth between the pad and VAB a time or two for repairs, then go with a brownish-orange color. If you want it to look like it was a typical shuttle flight that maybe sat on the pad a few weeks to a month or so, then go with an orange-brown color. If you want it to look like the ET was manufactured at Michoud, sent in the enclosed barge (out of the sunlight) from Louisiana to Florida via the intercoastal waterway, unloaded and rolled straight into the VAB, stacked to form the vehicle, moved to the pad, and launched with a pretty short period of time, go with a lighter tan-orange color....
One other thing to remember-- every camera, film, photo, computer monitor, etc. all display colors subtly different... Every time the format is changed between and including the first time the item is photographed and how you finally end up seeing the image of it, the slight differences in how the actual color we'd see is recorded on the medium being used (film, digital camera, uploaded and downloaded file, printout, viewed on screen, etc.) So while something might "look right" or an 'exact match' to a picture we might have or one we see online, the ACTUAL color can be slightly different. PLUS, then you need to throw in the lighting conditions when the image was actually captured-- colors will look VERY different when filmed under full sunlight compared to an overcast or cloudy day... the differences in how a color appears when photographed under artificial light is also very marked... Then of course there's scaling differences which affect how we perceive things... large objects far away tend to appear darker than they actually are, giving a false impression of the ACTUAL hue of a color viewed on a large rocket seen from very far away... Scaling effects also come into play with our models... of course they're MUCH smaller than the actual vehicles being modeled, and while sometimes having the technically "accurate" hue of a color, when it's applied to the rocket, it CAN look too light or "bright" compared to the real thing, simply because we're seeing a small object closer up compared to a large object much farther away... Usually using colors that are a SLIGHTLY darker hue than the "actual" color applied to the vehicle will make it look larger and more impressive to the eye when on the pad.... simply because that's how the color would look to our brains viewing it on a several hundred foot tall rocket from a few miles away...
All things that come into consideration when picking the color...
Then of course there were sometimes damaged sections of the foam that had to be scraped off and reapplied, leading to a much different color on those repaired areas than the surrounding original foam which had already aged some and been exposed to however much solar UV...
Maroon-- never heard of that one... Aggies would have loved it... LOL
Later! OL JR
The thing with the ET color is, they were never quite the same... Of course the first two shuttle flights used tanks painted white... This served a few purposes, among them 1) protecting the foam insulation on the ETs on these early flights, since it was well understood before hand that these flights would likely spend MONTHS out on the pad in the weather before actually being launched-- so covering the foam with paint would minimize UV weathering and stuff of the foam... 2) the paint also charred in a pattern showing the shock wave impingement off the orbiter nose and SRB nose cones during flight, the exhaust gas plume recirculation at the base of the orbiter, and the ET's nose heating itself during flight (parts of the ET heat up to over 400 degrees in flight due to air friction, especially where supersonic shockwaves shed by the orbiter and SRB nosecones hit the tank walls, and the tank nose itself...) The paint, when applied, weighed about 800 pounds or so, plus all the manhours necessary to apply it, so after the first two flights, the paint was deleted, so that extra payload could be carried instead.
SO, the tank can be white, if one desires the "maiden voyage" shuttle look... as for the 133 flights that flew with the orange/brown tanks, a lot of the actual coloration depends greatly on how long the tank sat out in the hot Florida sun on the pad or in processing... The tanks are actually sprayed with a foam material not unlike the 'foam in a can' stuff we get at the hardware store for various jobs... When it is first applied, it's a very light, creamy color... shortly after being exposed to the sun, it starts to turn the more recognizable orange-brown color, and the longer its exposed to solar UV, the darker it becomes... I broke a chunk of spray foam that had oozed from a corner of my brother's garage, and had been exposed to solar UV for a couple years, and took a picture of it for one paint test... one can clearly see that the unexposed foam (that was inside the corner of the building out of the sun) remained a creamy tan color, while the exterior surface of the foam "blob" had been weathered into an orange-brown color, with the brownish-orange being on the side getting the most sun, turning oranger and lighter as the surface curved around away from the sun...
SO, if you want your shuttle to look like one of those shuttle missions that got delayed for months and ended up sitting on the pad or moved back and forth between the pad and VAB a time or two for repairs, then go with a brownish-orange color. If you want it to look like it was a typical shuttle flight that maybe sat on the pad a few weeks to a month or so, then go with an orange-brown color. If you want it to look like the ET was manufactured at Michoud, sent in the enclosed barge (out of the sunlight) from Louisiana to Florida via the intercoastal waterway, unloaded and rolled straight into the VAB, stacked to form the vehicle, moved to the pad, and launched with a pretty short period of time, go with a lighter tan-orange color....
One other thing to remember-- every camera, film, photo, computer monitor, etc. all display colors subtly different... Every time the format is changed between and including the first time the item is photographed and how you finally end up seeing the image of it, the slight differences in how the actual color we'd see is recorded on the medium being used (film, digital camera, uploaded and downloaded file, printout, viewed on screen, etc.) So while something might "look right" or an 'exact match' to a picture we might have or one we see online, the ACTUAL color can be slightly different. PLUS, then you need to throw in the lighting conditions when the image was actually captured-- colors will look VERY different when filmed under full sunlight compared to an overcast or cloudy day... the differences in how a color appears when photographed under artificial light is also very marked... Then of course there's scaling differences which affect how we perceive things... large objects far away tend to appear darker than they actually are, giving a false impression of the ACTUAL hue of a color viewed on a large rocket seen from very far away... Scaling effects also come into play with our models... of course they're MUCH smaller than the actual vehicles being modeled, and while sometimes having the technically "accurate" hue of a color, when it's applied to the rocket, it CAN look too light or "bright" compared to the real thing, simply because we're seeing a small object closer up compared to a large object much farther away... Usually using colors that are a SLIGHTLY darker hue than the "actual" color applied to the vehicle will make it look larger and more impressive to the eye when on the pad.... simply because that's how the color would look to our brains viewing it on a several hundred foot tall rocket from a few miles away...
All things that come into consideration when picking the color...
Then of course there were sometimes damaged sections of the foam that had to be scraped off and reapplied, leading to a much different color on those repaired areas than the surrounding original foam which had already aged some and been exposed to however much solar UV...
Maroon-- never heard of that one... Aggies would have loved it... LOL
Later! OL JR
