Getting the wings motorized was my dream, unfortunatly as you said the wings need to be very light. Mine was a full scratchbuilt shuttle with hollow wings but to avoid any warp over time I built them very strong with a lot of reinforcement, they're light but not as light as the original I guess. Lorne said they used honeycomb and styrene, but the wings started to warp even before the end of the building. :lol
The other tough point is that the landing gears and doors are linked to the wing mechanism, there's not that much room inside the body (you need a strong armature, room for the electronic (engine lights and wing tip lights). I think everything (I mean the mechanism) should be homemade to fit in this tight body, with machined gears, machined landing gears etc... That's really something I wanted to do but because of the lack of money (would have cost a fortune !) and time (I was in a rush to finish it lol) and because of the lack of information of the ILM mechanism it never happened.
However I really hope someone will build it this way someday, that would make a beautiful model !
Guy, too bad you never finished any of your Shuttle. Mine is painted but I'm not happy with the result and I was waiting for your paintjob to redo mine ! :cry