I’m going to close out my evening of LEGO space catch-up with this awe-inspiring tower by micro-space master Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha).
In addition to the high level of detail we’ve come to expect from Tim, the tower includes working lights and a functional elevator!
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.
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.
I’m a sucker for a lovely micro cargo ship, and this one by Evan B. (LJ) is no exception. I love the offset yellow strut thingy, and the way the cargo containers are arranged is excellent. The rear section with the bridge and engines also includes enough detail to satisfy any fan of greebles.
Sending LEGO into space isn’t actually all that new, but an astronaut building a LEGO model of the spacecraft he’s in certainly is. Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa recently built a LEGO version of the International Space Station while aboard the ISS itself.
The full story and more photos are over on collectSPACE, and you can watch a NASA video on YouTube as well.
Gotta love that special build bubble to keep the LEGO elements from floating away to who knows where inside the ISS.
Jason Corlett combines two shades of gray to bring us a space ship with a lovely shape. I suppose the name eclipse relates to its resemblance to a crescent moon. Name aside, the ship manages to achieve complex curves while also incorporating a surface almost entirely covered in greebling.
The only thing I can fault Shannon Sproule (Shannon Ocean) for lately is his tardiness. Had he built all his wonderful new toys before Brickvention I could have seen them all in ABS. I guess his amazing photos suffice.
You can get your mind out of the gutter now. With a little help from his girlfriend, Nathaniel Brill (Shuppiluliumas) has taken LEGO Friends and given it a Flash Gordon remake. Yea-ahhhh! She’ll save every one of us.
This microscale destroyer by Eric Mickle hails from the Halo universe. With lots of smooth faces and angles, Eric has done a great job at capturing the complicated angular hull shape of the original.
