My latest starfighter features some hard-to-find medium green bricks and my current favorite part: the pink alien pod. I’m happy with the way it turned out, and hopefully you’ll agree that it indeed has an alien look to it.
Tag Archives: Space
Skyskipping the Light Fantastic
These new little “Skyskipper” space fighters, by ROOK, really are the bee’s knees. They’ve got a fun, sleek, shape, and a nice clean color scheme. The part that really got me interested, though, was the nesting of parts for the cockpit canopies, to give an integrated feel. In fact, when I saw the first thumbnail, which had closed cockpits, I thought there might be a new canopy piece involved.
Dragons in orbit?
I distinctly remember hearing about the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding in 1986. I was having dinner with my parents and sister, eating grapefruit for dessert, when the news came on the radio. It was a highly publicised flight, even before lift-off, because Christa McAuliffe was on board, as part of the teacher in space project. Before her flight, the Shuttle was the exclusive domain of scientists, engineers and test pilots. The explosion came as a shock, not just in the United States, but also for a then ten-year old boy from the Netherlands, sitting next to the radio. I also have distinct memories of the Columbia disaster in 2003. I had recently moved to a new apartment and had organised a house-warming party for that evening, with my friends (mostly fellow physicists). That evening we could talk about little else.
Both events highlighted problems with NASA’s approach to safety and showed that the Shuttle itself was a deeply flawed concept. Yet, last year’s pictures of NASA’s Boeing 747SCA flying the Shuttles around the US to their resting places at museums, fill me with sadness. Rather than making giant leaps, it feels as though we are slowly crawling backwards. American and European Astronauts are now resigned to flying in the cramped confines of Russian Soyuz capsules, that really aren’t all that different from the capsule that carried Yuri Gagarin into orbit more than 50 years ago.
There is a glimmer of progress though, in the form of the Dragon. Stephen Pakbaz (Apojove) has built a very nice model of this spacecraft, doing a good job of representing the round shape with its conic end.
Last week I attended a lecture by André Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut who was on board the International Space Station from December 2011 to July 2012. A Dragon docked with the station during this time, and Kuipers described the new-car smell that greeted the crew when they opened the hatch. It’s not as sexy as the Space Shuttle, but the significance of the Dragon is that it is the first commercially developed space craft intended for manned missions in orbit. Previously this was exclusively done by governments. So far the Dragon has only been used as an unmanned supply vehicle, but it has been developed with manned missions in mind and plans are afoot for a first crewed flight in 2015. It’s a small step, but hopefully, in the non-too-distant future, commercial companies will be cheaply doing the nitty-gritty of lifting stuff and people to orbit, allowing NASA to do the more exciting stuff further out there.
Starship ISIS (or) Manifest Cronyism
What is the point of being a Brother Brick with the all privilege and status that goes along with it, if you can’t abuse the power to promote the agendas of your closest associates? That was the question I asked myself when deciding whether or not to blog the latest massive S.H.I.P. by professional percussionist and raconteur Iain (~Ara~). I can hear the cries of the disenfranchised now…
“Goldman, this is outrageous, TBB always tells us we must have flawless photography on eye-burning white backgrounds! This photo doesn’t qualify at all: there is non LEGO clutter in the background, some kind of barbecue and is that an ashtray with butts in it? Butts on TBB!.”
Relax my excitable friends, this is Iain, and if you’d ever met him you’d realize that his inherent coolness allows him to supersede those concerns.
Sure, the SHIP is great, especially the bridge, but this post is less about how cool the model is and more about how cool the builder is. However, Iain cannot quite escape unpunished for his unwillingness to bow to the conventions of this site and the hobby in general.
How do you tell if the stage is level? The drummer is drooling from both sides of his mouth.
How can you tell a drummer’s at the door? The knocking speeds up.
What’s the last thing a drummer says in a band? “Hey guys, why don’t we try one of my songs?”
What do you call a drummer that breaks up with his girlfriend? Homeless.
How can you tell when a drummer’s at the door? He doesn’t know when to come in.
So please add your favorite drummer joke in the comments if you are motivated to take the piss out of Iain too.
“Isolation is not good for me.”
We might as well build a casita out on the TBB back-40 and install Fedde (Karf Oolhu) as one of the blog’s Artists in Residence. By my count, and admittedly math was never my strong suit, the self-styled “Reformed Cthulhu” has appeared 20 times on TBB as of this posting. The model is typical Karfian boilerplate that elicited many cries of NPU!” on Flickr. There are currently 2,966 in his stream (the vast majority are LEGO realated), and 1,803 models have been placed int the LEGO Group on Flickr. While I realize that more doesn’t necessarily mean better, I can think of few builders who are as prolific and talented as Karf.
Forced perspective in Spaaaace!
A Pigs in Space reference is the best I can muster, for a post title, with a newborn napping on my arm. Regardless, this new offering from John Moffatt really caught my eye. The underlying ship is nice, too. Though I suspect this may be a case of photoshop, rather than true forced perspective, I still enjoy it.
I also, don’t see a big deal with the new Flickr. I was able to navigate the non-mobile site from my phone, and grab the links needed to write this post. I hope the building public will keep on posting!
What Goes Vroom and Swoosh at the Same Time? Thumper!
The thing I love about rongYIREN‘s creations is his ability to pack in so much great design while maintaining playability. The Thumper is something the 10 year old me wishes LEGO had produced as a set so I could swoosh the removable, remote drone around while exploring an alien planet in a bouncy space rover. That rongYIREN is able to do all this with a sparse part count is impressive, and is in keeping with the best of LEGO’s own product design. Most adult fans of LEGO tend to build without thought to part limitations. We create mocs that could never see production because it would be cost prohibitive to do so. rongYIREN is that rare exception that is able to make great models without over building. Why he isn’t already a designer for LEGO is beyond me. Hello Billund?
Vespula vulgaris
David Roberts (David Roberts 01341) is under the influence and it shows. Dave cites nnenn, Peter Elson and Stewart Cowley’s Terran Trade Authority books as inspiration, which is as good as it gets for Sci-Fi ship design. According to the builder, the Wasp F1 is a high-speed interceptor designed to operate in space or the atmosphere. To me it looks like a paper airplane that has been painted by someone with a checkerboard fetish, but looks can be deceiving. The model features pop-up weapons, landing gear and something unique to Sci-Fi ships; an under-mounted cockpit.
You know I always like to hook up the stat-junkies when I can. The model is 86 studs long, with a wingspan of 40 studs. It weighs 1.45kg (3 lbs 4 oz) and is composed of around 2,000 bricks. With such a fine catalog of models, I’m surprised this is David’s first appearance on this blog of blogs.
Sunday morning R-Type fix.
Sitting in the Starbucks drive through and figured I would multi-task (don’t worry my car is safely in park…it is a long line).
This morning’s fix of R-Typey goodness comes from halfbeak with two rockin’ edits…one old-school and one new-school.
In other news, I finally got my caffeine fix now as well…
Eclipse and Omega
Its time for a Friday night Sci-Fi double feature courtesy of Björn (kaydee1982) of Bremen, Germany. The models are reminiscent of any number of 1980’s films, cartoons and toys, without being too specific to any one reference, and also harkens back to the halcyon days of the .Space crowd on LUGNET.
We begin with the “Omega“, which some reviewers on Flickr have likened to the Normandy from the Mass Effect video game series. I did enjoy the builder’s inclusion of his homeland’s flag on the side of the ship.
And finally, Björn has also created a suitable context for the “Eclipse” with the “Omega” space-dock. Not many builders bother to give their models a background beyond a piece of white paper or digital star-field, and the extra effort is appreciated by this Brother Brick.
PINK!
Well I guess technically fuchsia. Regardless, this R-Type by F@bz is downright wonderful and very unique representation of the source. The exposed mechanical components coupled with the brilliant colouring make this incredibly fun to look at. It also helps that I find it reminiscent of one of my favourite LEGO starfighters of all time, Max Braun’s Nayvyr PSX-6.2.
Here is the full photoset.
R-Round Up
Being almost at the half way point of the R-Type & Beyond starfighter build challenge, we have seen a very nice assortment of brilliant builds of all sizes shapes and colours.
Here is a quick round up of my favourites so far.
Shannon Ocean brings his retro space style with this rockin’ entry.
Pasukaru76 has been churning out a tonne of builds in both micro and minifig scales, but this colourful addition has to be one of favourites.
Mike Yoder blows it out of the water with this behemoth.
Pierre E Fieschi created perhaps the most colourful entry so far, and it works so well on all levels.
HatRabies has been keeping pace with Pascal on the number of submissions with a continuing variation of a micro R-Type…with each post they get better and better.
There are plenty more brilliant creations, so please head on over to the submission thread if you haven’t already checked it out.
You still have a little over 2 weeks to join in on the fun…hopefully by that time I will have mine done too.