Tag Archives: Space

From giant space carriers to starfighters, moon bases to moon buggies, whether you love LEGO models inspired by real-world space programs or science-fiction, you’re in the right place.

Historical black hole picture and ALMA observatory antenna accurately built in LEGO

Unless you have been living under a black hole, you have probably seen the historical picture of the supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. Chilean builder Luis Peña was inspired by the results of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration to build this new icon of science and the ALMA observatory, located in his home country. Luis loves science, and we have previously featured another historical event in science built by him, the Apollo/Soyuz meeting.

The mosaic on the left displays the famous black hole radiowave picture, where the resolution of a 16×16 mosaic actually gives an accuracy almost comparable to the original. Speaking of accurate to the original, the dish of the radio antenna (one of 66 antennas in the observatory) is strikingly clean and parabolic, for the perfect focusing of captured light into the detector. The dish is stabilized by a white rigid hose, making a robust and accurate recreation.

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Could Classic Space and Blacktron ever get along?

Looking at this Tracked Laser Mining Vehicle by Jon & Catherine Stead, the first thing that springs to mind is classic Blacktron. A few details seem out of place in this assumption and the description reveals no villainous intentions.

The yellow spacemen suggest this is in fact very much a peaceful vehicle. I particularly like the laser array, supported by strings going between pillars of translucent red 1×1 round plates. The ground is quite interesting as well, using an established technique and carrying us to a faraway moon or planet with its colours.

Try to understand the gravity of the situation

Classic Space seems to be in a boom recently, probably due to the recent re-release of classic space minifigures in the 70841 Benny’s Space Squad set. This gives us quite a few opportunities to share amazing Classic Space builds to share here on the Brothers Brick, including scenes, rovers and mecha. A big fan of Classic Space, Andreas Lenander gives us an immersive piece of action in this beautifully lit all-LEGO scene titled “Gravity failure at Epsilon IV.” It uses the brand-new pink classic spacesuit.

Click to explore more areas of the Epsilon IV base

Dragon unit LL-32167

I always wanted to make a mecha dragon, even as far back as 2012 when I fell in love with LEGO dragons. I always knew it would be gray and greebly, but it almost seemed like cheating. Light gray is the LEGO colour with most the available detail pieces, so it would make finding solutions to building problems easier than I would like them to be. Ironically, this is the most complicated dragon build I have made yet (of which there are 24 now, including some more open interpretations of what a “dragon” is). I working on building this one on and off for 2 months from late December to mid-February.

Click to read about the building process and see a few extra pictures

Let’s get back to the moon

As NASA looks forward to the challenge of getting back to the moon and establishing a permanent habitat, here’s a vision of a lunar base we can all sign up to. Who wouldn’t want to spend some time in Jon Blackford‘s brilliant LEGO Research Outpost? The styling is excellent, with an attractive angled frontage and good greebly detailing along the roof. The hatch and the support pillars are particularly good, and the habitat’s smooth studless look offers a nice contrast with the rougher baseplate, creating a feeling of rocky surroundings.

All the important Classic Space elements are in place — the blue and grey colour scheme, the trans-yellow windows, the multicoloured team of astronauts. But is are some novel parts use too, including the paint rollers used in the rover’s front sensors and the ingots used to create unusually-shaped cargo crates. Best of all, there’s a fully detailed interior to enjoy.

Getting the ball rolling

Never underestimate the power of a good color scheme. This gorgeous orange, teal, and white racer by Chris Perron is instantly eye-catching thanks to its bold shades. The car isn’t just all flash, though, as it’s designed as a futuristic mag-lev vehicle around a large rear ball, held in place with a pair of orange basketball hoops. The ball originally hails from Duplo, and it’s one of only a few elements to have successfully made the jump from Duplo to System sets. The use of 3×3 radar dish pairs for front “wheels” also works great (do mag-lev cars need wheels?).

Incredibly accurate U.S.S. Enterprise built from LEGO

There are many amazing Star Trek LEGO creations out there, as can be seen in our Star Trek archives. One would expect a proportional amount of average creations in the theme, but they seem to be very scarce, as if Star Trek attracts great builders like a magnet. Today’s magnetically charged builder is Kevin J. Walter, whom you might remember as the builder of a certain huge and nearly perfect Klingon Bird of Prey.

The build is stunning, capturing the shape of the iconic starship (especially the saucer!) perfectly, while simultaneously packing a lot of cool details. All the complex angles are done so cleanly, one would imagine the bricks were made for them. There is a moderate amount of photoshop included as well, notably the lit windows and the deflector. And if you want to put it into some context, here is a photo of the Enterprise encountering Kevin’s Bird of Prey.

Classic Space, roved by rovers for 40 years

Brickshelf user (yes, Brickshelf still exists) legofrik has recently built a cute boxy rover in the colours of Classic Space. He says the inspiration was a coincidental discovery that small treads fit around 6×6 dishes to create a unique wheel design.

The build has a very boxy shape, and yet avoids looking rectangular and simple. The colours are not only blocked visually, but also by purpose; blue as the main bulk of the vehicle, gray for radars, hoses and other technical doodads and translucent yellow as the iconic Classic Space window and windscreen colour. The rover also has working suspension and a detailed interior.

Attention all Rock Raiders! This is not a drill!

Twenty years after its inception, the often-overlooked yet undeniably cool LEGO Rock Raiders theme finds its way into fan creations as well. In February we featured a collection of vehicles built in honour of this theme, and now it’s Chris Perron‘s turn to show off his gritty tunneling hovercraft, with all its glorious teal and chrome highlights. Chris notes that this creation is actually a year and a half old, but was inspired by friends to give the tunneler a base and finally upload it.

The base is a convincing cutout of a rock tunnel, dotted with chrome green crystals (these crystals actually come from the Space Port line from the same year–Rock Raiders featured trans-neon green crystals), and it’s perfect place to show off this cute little drilling drone. The drone itself is quite a perfect representation of its theme. The colour combination has all the characteristics of Rock Raiders; teal highlights, black and yellow warning stripes, a brown rollcage and grays as the main colour. What is especially impressive is the complex drilling head in the front, built of various custom chrome elements.

Massive NASA Vehicle Assembly Building gets miniscule LEGO tribute

It’s still the largest single-storey building ever constructed, so what better tribute could there be to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building than a teeny-tiny microscale LEGO version? The level of detail packed into Ryan Olsen‘s small model is impressive — the grille bricks providing texture on the sides, the machinery on the roof, and the massive shutter doors. Don’t miss the Saturn V rocket on its way to the launch-pad atop the crawler-transporter, or the perfect shaping of the Launch Control Centre with its sloped windows, jutting at an angle away from the main structure. The only thing I’d challenge on this model is using 1×1 plates for cars — unfortunately they don’t quite fit the scale. The rest of it is bang-on though, making me want to head back to Florida and get a refresher boost to my space-geekery.

Classic Space has never looked as good as with these jaw dropping details!

Benny would not only be thrilled but ecstatic and going bonkers with this upgrade of the Classic Space 928 Galaxy Explorer. Builder Alec Hole did such a great job and so jaw-dropping of an upgrade that it almost looks like it could have come out of a scene in a sci-fi movie. The detailing and greebling in key spots paired with minimal stud exposure give it a very sleek look. Measuring in at almost a meter in length, this is one sweet spaceship that I wish I had in my collection.

Enjoy interstellar exploration in style with this sleek and silver spaceship

Cole Blaq is well-known for his LEGO spaceships, such as this starfighter we shared back in December. We’re pleased to see Cole back again with another slick-looking spacecraft. The color scheme is particularly striking, relying heavily on dark metallic bricks with a dash of tan here and there. This combination feels believably modern.