Does anybody have a recommendation for a mix to replicate the color on the fuel tank for the shuttle? Thanks
Eric
The closest I’ve found is RLM 79 / Sand Yellow. I was RGB matching off a high resolution photo of the tank (I used the large version from NASAs site) and came up with 191/133/74, and afaik RLM 79 Sand-Yellow is 183/125/66…
A little playing with the red and green paints and you could probably get even closer. 
the color of the fuel tank is a sand orange color.I see it every time I go to the space center 5 miles from my house!if you want I can get pics of the tanks color if i can just let me know!
check this link on the colors. it has some recommendations
Thanks for the link infimurf.
stukah; It’d be great if you could post some pics, as I would require a good photo to reproduce this colour as well. Not much of a space modeler, but I decided to build the old Revell kit just for the sake of nostalgia.
here is a link to pics i just put up on my site
The above recommendations are good starting points, but keep in mind the color of the ET is kind of a moving target, so to speak. Aside from the fact the basic color has varied a bit over the years, it can also vary on each individual ET depending on whether the foam was applied recently or some time ago. The color changes with the age and the elements.
The last time I painted an ET, I mixed Testor’s "leather and “radome tan” to get a color I thought was close. I can’t recall the ratios I used, though. I do recall that for the ET’s lighter-colored ablative coating used on the ET, I used the same paints, but mixed in the opposite ratio. (I just can’t remember the ratio, though.)
Once you get it within a certain orangy-tannish-rust color range, you should be ok. Reference photos can be helpful, but the color in them can also be off a bit; plenty of times I’ve seen the same photo reproduced in different formats and they’ll show the ET color differently. That means you have to keep in mind the limitations of the reproduction quality of the reference photos you’re using.
Then there’s the whole issue of what lighting the photo was taken in…
I’ve seen various “official” sources describe the ET color as everything from “rust” to “apricot.” For what it’s worth, a publication put out by Rockwell International in 1983 and titled “Shuttle Model Information” (with artwork by Stan Jones) describes the ET color as “nongloss light sienna-ochre (autumn gold).”
Good luck.
David Hanners
Minneapolis, MN
Makes sense that the color changes, I spent some time surfing the NASA pictures link above for painting my project, I’m building the AMT Man in Space (Mercury to Apollo) and Hasegawa’s shuttle kit. It looks like each mission had a slightly different paint scheme even within the same program. I also found variation on the shuttle tank from a dark orange to a sand color, personally I’m going to go with the more orange version just for the more colorful nature, I can back it up with a pic for the rivit counters even if it is only one, the kit says to paint it white which is clearly wrong, maybe its white under the foam?
the first couple of shuttle flights had the tank painted white. they stopped doing it to save weight.