I don't know if you get Discovery's The Learning Channel (TLC: cable channel 52 here) but they had a show about rockets on and a custom rocket was built to behave like the space shuttle, used full rocket power to get it up and then on the return they used RC equipment to bring it down to a landing, wasn't great, but it landed belly down. The thing was huge, and even on TV it was fun to watch fly. I think a project like this would be real cool and probably be a real crows pleaser at fly-ins and the such.

All of you here that have the space shuttles are really cool, and its obvious you put quite a lot of work in it, but I just think it would be cooler if it was like the real space shuttle and used real rockets to get it into the air then was controlled without power on the return. Makes the flight a bit more realistic because if the NASA guys screw up on the landing they are not in too good of a situation because on the real shuttle you can't just power up and circle around to take the landing again. Although I must admit even the powered ones are super cool