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.

Count down to SHIPtember

It’s almost time for one of the craziest build theme months: SHIPtember.

Starting September 1st, builders have exactly one month to build a S.H.I.P or Seriously Huge Investment in Parts (or Time for some of the people with larger collections). Each SHIP build must be 100 studs or more (in any orientation). Though for people with school or other ‘real life matters’ there’s PRE-SHIPtember which allows you to start earlier, but you’re bound to the same one month rule.

Last year there were over 100 SHIPs that were built:

So start clearing off your social calenders, clean up your build areas, make those bricklink orders (or don’t if you’re confident) and get ready for some SHIPs!

… Though in previous years, there’s quite the anxious bunch that want to get started and have to wait weeks before September rolls around … feel free to take a stab at the Brick Separator challenge:

Rules are simple, just build something with those pesky brick separators! I know that’ll keep me busy till SHIPtember….

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EXTERMINATE: This LEGO Dalek is coming for you!

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! This LEGO version of Doctor Who’s infamous villains, the Daleks, looks creepily accurate. I almost thought creator Matt De Lanoy’s version was made of cardboard, plastic, and a toilet plunger, like the show’s originals. Don’t forget that official Doctor Who LEGO is now a thing you can buy, with the Doctor making an appearance in LEGO Dimensions!

Spacefair Fleet Week & Rancorbait Galactic Celebration

It’s Seafair Fleet Week here in Seattle, and the annual “Parade of Ships” went past my downtown office window this afternoon. Inspired by all those big boats on Elliott Bay, I went looking for a nice set of cool LEGO ships, and quickly found these beauties by Rancorbait.

First up, the “Nova” Medium Assault Cruiser incorporates great brick-built striping and a sporty red fin.

The “Eclipse” Heavy Assault Cruiser is very obviously part of the same fleet, with a consistent design aesthetic, though the Eclipse is a bit larger and has significantly more greebles. The bridge overhanging the white section is an excellent touch.

Finally, though it’s a different scale and certainly isn’t part of the same fleet, I can’t help but love this big red “Warthog” gunship. There are just so many non-right angles all over this thing!

SpaceX Falcon 9 Landing in LEGO

Space is dangerous. Getting there maybe even more so, what with riding a controlled explosion to overcome gravity and all. In the United States, the majority of the space flight innovations came from NASA with a significant amount of help early on from the Air Force and German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun.

Max Schellenberg gives us an intro to modern space travel with this brilliant microscale version of a Falcon 9 landing in the Atlantic Ocean. This is adorable and I love it.

Now, there are a number of private companies developing new technology: Boeing and Lockheed Martin regularly launch the Delta IV rockets under United Launch Alliance; Boeing is developing their CST-100 crew capsule. Sierra Nevada has their Dreamchaser. Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin, for tourist space flight, launching out of Texas.

And Elon Musk has SpaceX.

Off all of these, I get the most giddy about SpaceX. Because the first foray into reusable equipment with the Shuttle program still required going and fishing the boosters out of the Atlantic, along with the orbiter returning safely to earth. SpaceX has developed their Falcon 9, capable of launching a payload into space, and having the booster return to a fixed point. Namely, their “autonomous spaceport drone ships,” the Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You. They’ve recently leased one of the former launch complexes on Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and converted into a landing facility as well.

That is amazing.

Interstellar Sales Professional

Evidently, selling earth-like vacuum cleaners is a dangerous, adventurous business. Sebastiaan (Alien Cat) returns to us from real-life adventures to present the little Alien Cat’s terribly hazardous profession selling vacuum cleaners across the known universe.

Business is clearly doing well, if this sporty read number is any indication:

Clearly his driving skills haven’t improved. That, or he failed to account for changes in gravity and atmosphere from one planet to another.

I’m particularly fond of this lovely little star ship called Tia Maria.

Shiny gold New Horizons probe by Stefan Schindler

The NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto feels like the most exciting space story since the Mars Curiosity rover landed on Mars nearly three years ago. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing plenty of great LEGO models inspired by this historic achievement.

Like many spacecraft, New Horizons is covered in gold foil for insulation. A couple weeks ago, Iain built his New Horizons probe using yellow bricks, since finding the parts to build an all-gold probe is quite challenging. Stefan Schindler solved this with the help of a dash of gold paint, producing this beautiful gold New Horizons probe.

While some of our readers may balk at Stefan’s solution, picky builders looking for some “NPU” should focus instead on Stefan’s solution for the GPHS-RTG (the plutonium generator) built from tank treads.

Homeworld-inspired Vaygr battlecruiser by Dorian Glacet

Even though I’ve mainly been building military models over the last couple of years, I appreciate a good spaceship. And I’ve always been disappointed that I haven’t been able to play the iconic and influential Homeworld games. French builder Dorian Glacet has been playing Homeworld 2 lately, and built this great ship (actually a true SHIP at 105 studs long) with classic colors and stripes.

Dorian’s SHIP may look a lot like many of the other Homeworld-inspired spaceships we’ve featured over the years, but when I looked at his photostream, I was struck by the rather innovative approach to the ship’s core, which is entirely “studs-out”:

Dorian then attached greebles and the ship’s skin to this core:

Check out Dorian’s photostream on Flickr for more, including preliminary digital designs and work-in-progress shots.

VTOL is the future for beachheads

Here’s a smart-looking craft by Joe and Will Merzlak, a near-future vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) transport. Besides being packed with some really wonderful building techniques, the Merzlak brothers’ par excellance presentation skills are worth pointing out in their own right.
A really fantastic photo-editing job can make a great model like this really stand out. Of course, we realize that not everyone has the time, skills, or tools to make this happen, but remember: the presentation of your model is the only thing everyone else online will get to see. It’s worth spending some extra time to ensure good lighting and an interesting and relevant (or at least clean) background.

It’s a Plutopalooza!

It really doesn’t feel like 9+ years since NASA launched the New Horizons probe on a mission to explore the dwarf planet Pluto and its system of moons. But now the craft’s closest approach is finally less than a week away, and NASA wants you to celebrate the occasion by throwing your very own Plutopalooza party! (Heads up: You’d better make the party last 16 months, because at 1kbps that’s how long the probe will take to transmit back all 64Gb of its data from the encounter)

Since several of my Brothers Bricks co-contributors are hopeless space junkies, I thought I’d mark the occasion by building the above LEGO model of the little probe …accompanied by targets Pluto and Charon naturally! A lot easier to do now that we finally know what color they are.

It’s an interesting milestone for me since my very first true MOC was of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, back in 1979 when it passed Jupiter. Armed with a clothes line, white bed sheet, length of string and basic film camera, I had no idea that the resulting images would be…. hopelessly out of focus! T_T

To fly among the Tzars....

Doctor Mobius felt inspired by the classic Galaxy Commander to put a Neo-classic Space twist on that venerable old relic, and came out with this lovely concoction, which he’s dubbed the Galaxy Tzar. Just like the original, the Tzar splits into several self-contained sections for more modular star-system domination.

Force feedback

It’s now exactly six months until the release of the new Star Wars movie The Force Awakens. And fan fervor has never been greater! The two teaser trailers have been widely scrutinized, parodied, and even LEGO-ized. But I’m not talking about the predictable flood of Han Solo minifig gray hair swaps… Builder markus19840420 has recreated two scenes from the second teaser in incredible detail. First up is this exciting moment in the TIE hangar, complete with laser blasts and explosions:

Then there is his stunning diorama showing the ‘habit-AT-AT’ glimpsed in the same teaser:

As an added bonus, takamichi irie has started photoshopping his excellent BB-8 model into scenes from both teasers:

Rumor has it a full movie trailer is due to be unveiled at San Diego Comic Con next month. So I think we can expect a bunch more Force Awakens builds in the near future – once all the LEGO Star Wars fans have picked themselves up off the floor, that is ;-)

Asteroid Field Recon Voyager brought to you by M:Tron

Every space-going civilization needs a manner of knowing about their immediate environment, so as best to understand some of the interstellar dangers. Right? SpirituInsanum has brought us a lovely ship to do just that.