I don't remember when it was made, but was made in 3DStudio Max 1.0 or 2.0. I was learning 3D, and one of the first things I wanted to create was the Space Shuttle.
My modelling skills where not good, so I did what I did, and good it is! but I always wanted to make it again, and this time as it deserves.
Austin Meyer (the owner of Laminar Research) knew me because I was building the CRJ200 and I put that work into Youtube. I didn't know that, and I don't remember who contact who first. 
Austin has sometimes people that work for him, building a plane, but they are not inside of Laminar. The creator receive a money and then the plane is used in XPlane. I suppose that was the way we are going to collaborate, so he asked me, what I wanted to build... and I said inmediatelly "THE SPACE SHUTTLE!" 
The years of the space shuttle where over recently, so Austin and I wanted to give it a tribute.
I put all my energy. As other planes I built it in 3DStudio and animated in Blender. It toke me 6 months fully working (I was unemploy) in conjunction with the CRJ200 to finish it.
The cockpit I made for it, was one of the most complicated cockpits I ever did, and as I said, a "salad of switchs". Because of those hole-switches, the cockpit had lots of polygons, but xplane9 had no problem with that.

For the Space Shuttle I received very little money, compared with the ammount of work I put in it. It was not a great deal in that point, but also I had, because of it a job inside Laminar for 8 years. So I can say that, it was a great deal at the end. Austin was pleased.

But with the Space Shuttle, I have a thorn in he heart, as I wanted to be more complete in systems. I wanted also to see it in xplane from launch to recovery missions. Something that I pushed very strongly all the times but it was never produced, and I understand it because Laminar don't produce deep hardcore planes. It produce the great frame to make deep hardcore addons, and that is good enough.
I hope a day I will be able to see a simulator as Space Shuttle Mission Simulator, with a model from me. 
Meanwhile if you would like to use the best sim experiece with Space Shuttle, with no encripted missions as Space Shuttle Mission simulator does, then visit this website from the free Flight Gear simulator and checkout the Space Shuttle areas: https://forum.flightgear.org/viewforum.php?f=87

And here for the wiki of the project: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Space_Shuttle#Nominal_Operations