Following the official launch of the LEGO CUUSOO Hayabusa space probe, it only seems fitting to highlight another great CUUSOO project inspired by the exploration of our solar system. CUUSOO user Brianr8811 has proposed a LEGO version of NASA’s Deep Space Habitat and Rover, which may serve humanity in its first manned mission to Mars.
Via Brick Town Talk.
The second fan-created LEGO CUUSOO project has just been released in Japan, and will be available from the LEGO Shop online later in 2012. The set depicts the Hayabusa probe, which brought bits of an asteroid back to earth.
Here’s the full press release:
BILLUND, Denmark – The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, the second LEGO® CUUSOO release, has gone on sale in Japan, while a limited number of Hayabusa sets will also be available exclusively online via shop.LEGO.com later in the year. No release date has been set yet.
The original Hayabusa model on LEGO CUUSOO was built by Daisuke Okubo and achieved 1,000 supporters on the Japanese-only version of LEGO CUUSOO in the spring of 2011. LEGO model designer Melody Louise Caddick designed the final model, refining earlier concept models based on Daisuke’s original project.
The model is priced at ￥ 4,118 in Japan, USD49, EUR49
LEGO CUUSOO is a website where LEGO fans can submit their ideas for new LEGO products and collect votes to make their ideas become a reality. They can also vote for other users’ ideas. It can be found at http://lego.cuusoo.com
LEGO CUUSOO began in 2008 with a Japanese site that attracted hundreds of ideas and saw thousands of votes cast by a 35,000-strong community. It was launched globally in October.
The first Japanese product, the Shinkai 6500 submersible, went on sale in Japan in February 2011. A project backed by Minecraft developer Mojang became the first user-sponsored project to be approved on the global version of LEGO CUUSOO.
Ideas supported by 10,000 votes are examined by a LEGO jury to check the models meet LEGO standards of safety and playability and support the LEGO brand. Consumers who have their ideas chosen for production will earn 1% of the total net sales of the product.’
Hayabusa (“falcon” in English) is an unmanned spacecraft built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), designed to travel to a small near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa and return sample material to Earth. Hayabusa’s mission began in 2003 and ended successfully in 2010.
The Space Shuttle program may have ended, but in late December 2011, Romanian teenager Raul Oaida launched its LEGO doppelganger 35,000 meters (115,000 feet) into the upper atmosphere. Raul achieved this singular feat by stringing the LEGO shuttle beneath a weather balloon — with the permission of German air traffic control.
Read more about the launch on Raul’s blog. Thanks to the dozens of readers who made sure we posted this. ;-)
I was in the process of blogging some sweet Star Trek micro-vessels by Jake (we’ll come back to them in a minute) when I stumbled on this earlier beauty that I just can’t pass up. Jake’s microscale spaceship Atlas has a really interesting shape, and even a detailed underside. The ring is composed of the LEGO tires that we all have bins of.
But back to the Star Trek ships, here’s my favorite. See all of them in the photoset on Flickr.
We’ve gone far too long without featuring a lovely sky-fi fighter by Fredo (Fredoichi). Fredo’s Karibachi San Zero incorporates minifig legs in some really interesting ways.
And since we didn’t feature them while he was building these mecha back in September, here’s a roundup of four awesome variations on a theme.
I’ve seen plenty of Lego building destroyed in combat, but non have been split in half by an earthquake, which makes this work by Gabriel (Lego.Skrytsson) a pleasant sight.
It looks like the cat in this little scene by Tyler Clites (Legohaulic) is looking for a little snack to tide it over until morning. Really, though, it’s the tiny aquarium buildings (practically micro scale castles) that set this apart for me. The effect is good enough that when I saw a small thumbnail of this image, I wasn’t sure if it was LEGO or not.
I built this drone space fighter almost a year ago, and have just realized that I’d never posted photos of it online. Since it has been awhile since I posted any of my own builds here, I thought it was high time I do so again.
I built it to serve as an escort to my Contus Lancer Corvette. As such, I tried to work broadly in the same design language. In addition to using the red on white color scheme, I tried to work in various angled shapes, although the smaller scale meant different things were possible. For the name, once again, I went with a Latin word, this time a type of shield.
Matt De Lanoy has made this wonderful mosaic of the protagonists from one of my favorite webcomics, The Order of the Stick. He’s portrayed the characters perfectly, even capturing a bit of the humor, with poor halfling Belkar being almost out of frame. Just seeing this mosaic makes me want to go read more OOTS. If you’re not familiar with The Order of the Stick, I highly recommend checking it out.
via Mosaic Bricks.
We featured Mark Anderson’s groundbreaking Catwoman art last year, but now Mark’s at it again, refining his technique with a new MOC (My Own Creation) by transcribing a classic cartoon character into his unique Lego line art. This time Mark gives us a breakdown of how the picture is constructed, and shows that it’s not merely tiles arranged in lines, but actually made up of fully connected pieces.
Mark Stafford (nabii) has had the inspired idea to harness to power of LEGO CUUSOO to help in our important, but until recently unknown, quest for Justin Bieber LEGO sets. So if you’d like to see JB in LEGO form, go vote.
I’ll get back to my usual programming when I return to Australia. But this opportunity could not be ignored.
He let something fall. It’s a Truffula seed. The last one of all! You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.
The Once-ler’s house is brought to you by Jason Allemann‘s girlfriend, who built this with his advice and collection.
Via The Living Brick