The shuttle was originally an experiment into a vehicle that could fit into the bay of the XR2 Ravenstar - another spaceplane I designed and one you can fly in Orbiter. The Hyper-thingy is based on slightly different hypersonic and lifting body research to its parent, I'm not sure if it was built for it specifically or not, I'm pretty sure I was working on this model back in perhaps '08, and my main comp died so i built this originally on a lower powered backup machine while i waited on parts.
Anyway, as for the mats, it's not that simple, setting up metal is easy, but you'd have to know how to setup the lights and environment or it just won't look right... so i'd look into that more... get your environment right (and theres so much resource out there you dont need me to tell you my bad habits) and it'll work, if you just have a plain black background and ambient lighting it'll look terrible. think particularly about the amounts of light flying about in your scene dynamic range and so on... HDRI images are of course a good way to push beyond those boundaries, look into linear workspace perhaps.
they're all based on different studies, to an extent. Since the little shuttle is perhaps hauled into space on something else and tubs its way back to earth if needed (the orbiter version relies on chemical propellant for example) then its based on research into lifting bodies and the space shuttle and so on. There's a whole family of these types of design - i'm surprised nothing like it has been built for real, Kliper for example looked promising.
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The whole front end of the ship does look like it could come off and still be a ship in its own right though.
I would really love to see the settings you use for that metal materiel, looks incredibly realistic.
Anyway, as for the mats, it's not that simple, setting up metal is easy, but you'd have to know how to setup the lights and environment or it just won't look right... so i'd look into that more... get your environment right (and theres so much resource out there you dont need me to tell you my bad habits) and it'll work, if you just have a plain black background and ambient lighting it'll look terrible. think particularly about the amounts of light flying about in your scene dynamic range and so on... HDRI images are of course a good way to push beyond those boundaries, look into linear workspace perhaps.
It's amazing.
Kind regards.
Iain