Saturn V... in Lego...

Verne Bunsen

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A lot of non-guitar-related pursuits have been tossed about here in the Off Topic section, but I can't say I've ever seen........ Legos. So here's some. My wife caught me ogling the new Saturn V kit in one of my sons catalogs, so she found it in stock somewhere and ordered it for my birthday. Cool! Even the box is huge. Banana for scale:
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(TL/DR: Spaceship! Neat pictures of the finished product can be found on page 3 of this thread)

If you'd like more information about the Saturn V rocket, the good people at XKCD have gone to the trouble of explaining it "using only the ten hundred words people use the most often". Which is brilliant.
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(As an aside, it's worth spending some time at XKCD. Wonderful stuff...)

My son and I started putting it together tonight. It has a whopping 12 bags containing a total of almost 2000 pieces. Which is rather a lot. The finished product will top out at 40" tall! Also the manual is about as thick as the white pages (am I dating myself with that reference, or do they still print phonebooks?).
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Today is Wednesday and I've got to head out of town on Tuesday, so that gives us 6 days to knock out 12 bags of Legos. So we're shooting for 2 bags every evening starting tonight. Should oughtta be do-able I think.

The first two bags went something like this:
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My son was quick to tell me that if we did 3 bags each night instead, we could finish in just four days. But alas, it bedtime for Bonzo...
 
Very cool! Always been fascinated with those rockets. Used to be heavy into flying model rocketry. It's a fairly inexpensive hobby your son might enjoy when he gets a little older.

 
A friend of mine has that set!  It's rather...large.  I think it's something like 3 feet long.  But Legos of all varieties occupied a significant chunk of my childhood (and my...no-longer-a-childhood  :icon_biggrin:).

We had a bit of a discussion as to whether or not the 1,969 piece count was intentional.  The Saturn V was developed to support the Apollo program, which attained its goal of a manned lunar landing and return with Apollo 11 in 1969.  If it's not intentional, it's a pretty awesome coincidence.
 
Good catch! I'm sure you're right - that's too coincidental to be coincidental. Major conspiracy theories have been based on flimsier evidence than that.

I remember following the Apollo program when I was a kid, being glued to our fuzzy rabbit-eared black & white TV trying to ignore the vertical hold problem while watching every second of anything they broadcast on the subject. It was the beginning of what we were sure was going to become a Star Trek world reality. Warp drive was surely around the corner, zipping us around the galaxy meeting hot alien chicks and learning all sorts of new technology, curing all sorts of awful diseases and getting transported wherever you needed to be in seconds. Hell, who knew? Maybe someday phones wouldn't need cords! What could possibly be wrong with that? I mean, besides losing "I was in the the bathroom" or just plain "out" as an excuse for ignoring an interrupt?
 
People may gripe about text messages and the "lack of communication skills", but they are definitely easier to ignore.  Of course, I'm always a fan of the "I don't have time to talk to you" excuse (regardless of its validity at the time).  In a lot of ways, though we are living in a kind of Star Trek world (minus the teleporters and warp drives).  We have computers that respond to voice commands and have access to the entirety of human knowledge, that mostly fit in our pockets.  We have vehicles on the verge of being able to drive themselves, although we're still further away than a lot of people seem to think - it's not "two years out", it's probably 10-20 years at least.

I like to think that after Lego finished designing the kit, they had like 1,957 pieces or something and some astronomy/rocketry nerd was like "Guys, if we can just fit 12 more pieces in there somewhere, we can have a part count that reads the year of the Saturn V's most successful mission!"  And the rest of them got way too excited and set about tweaking the kit with an extra 12 pieces.

Or maybe it just worked out that way.  But I like to think that the people who make Legos are as big of nerds as people like me who enjoy building with them.
 
If you are into this, and I am, and are ever able to visit Cape Canaveral, go visit the Kennedy Space Center.  They have a Saturn V on its side.  The whole thing.  It's mind blowing.  The geek part of me was in heaven.  Hell, IMO, it's worth making the trip to Florida just for this.

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I've never seen that, as much as I'd love to. I did get to see one of the first Gemini capsules once. Amazing on a whole different level, in that was so small. It was difficult to believe you could shoehorn a man into the thing, especially wearing a space suit. I mean, this thing was so tight it didn't look like a young child with nothing on but tidy whiteys could get into it.
 
Cagey said:
Very cool! Always been fascinated with those rockets. Used to be heavy into flying model rocketry. It's a fairly inexpensive hobby your son might enjoy when he gets a little older.

I loved to build and launch the Estes model rockets when I was younger, I haven't exposed junior to it yet. He's 10 now, so might indeed be time!
 
Sovereign_13 said:
I like to think that after Lego finished designing the kit, they had like 1,957 pieces or something and some astronomy/rocketry nerd was like "Guys, if we can just fit 12 more pieces in there somewhere, we can have a part count that reads the year of the Saturn V's most successful mission!"  And the rest of them got way too excited and set about tweaking the kit with an extra 12 pieces.

Or maybe it just worked out that way.  But I like to think that the people who make Legos are as big of nerds as people like me who enjoy building with them.

Oh, I think they definitely are, haha! Check out this picture from the manual, I love it! At a glance it would  pass for a shot from NASA in the 60s.
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We had the same discussion about the piece count last night and I'm inclined to agree: too coincidental to be coincidental! A very nice touch if you ask me.
 
That's absolutely awesome.

I confess I was fortunate enough to go to Space Camp when I was like 10.  We did get to visit the Kennedy Space Center, and you really can't get a sense of scale until you're standing under that rocket.  It's just incredible.

One of my favorite parts was the bus tour of the launch area (they were still doing Shuttle launches then - pre-Columbia tragedy).  They bring the shuttle out of the same building they used to house the Saturn Vs.  When it was built, it was the tallest building in the world!  According to the tour guide, the stripes on the flag painted on the building were about as wide as a highway lane.

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As you can see, those side vent-looking things are doors.  The Saturn V on its launch platform was only a bit shorter than that.  The Shuttle, by comparison, only needs the doors open about 1/3 of the way.
 
ghotiphry said:
If you are into this, and I am, and are ever able to visit Cape Canaveral, go visit the Kennedy Space Center.  They have a Saturn V on its side.  The whole thing.  It's mind blowing.  The geek part of me was in heaven.  hell, IMO, it's worth making the trip to Florida just for this.

ASinside.jpg

We have family in Florida but in our visits we have never made it to Cape Canaveral. We will have to rectify that I think.
 
Sovereign_13 said:
That's absolutely awesome.

I confess I was fortunate enough to go to Space Camp when I was like 10.  We did get to visit the Kennedy Space Center, and you really can't get a sense of scale until you're standing under that rocket.  It's just incredible.

One of my favorite parts was the bus tour of the launch area (they were still doing Shuttle launches then - pre-Columbia tragedy).  They bring the shuttle out of the same building they used to house the Saturn Vs.  When it was built, it was the tallest building in the world!  According to the tour guide, the stripes on the flag painted on the building were about as wide as a highway lane.

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As you can see, those side vent-looking things are doors.  The Saturn V on its launch platform was only a bit shorter than that.  The Shuttle, by comparison, only needs the doors open about 1/3 of the way.

"According to the tour guide, the stripes on the flag painted on the building were about as wide as a highway lane." Man, that puts it in perspective. What a cool experience! I had to settle for Space Camp the movie  :icon_biggrin:
 
If you can introduce your kid to Estes rockets and then take him to see the real deal, I think you'll have one very cool family adventure.

Man, this whole subject takes me back to when I was about that age.  Launching Estes rockets off the basketball court in the park across the street.  :icon_biggrin:  I think the biggest one I had was a 2-stage, but I don't think I ever used anything bigger than a D engine.  Good times, though, for sure.
 
Love NASA, love the Saturn V, love Legos, so this thread is a lot of win.  :)  I was aware of the existence of this thing, but don't really have (or make) the time to play with Legos nowadays.  But if I did, this one, and the Porsche 911, would be at the top of my list.

Have been to KSC twice, once as a kid with my parents, and once as an adult with my wife.  I have a hard time seeing how people could not enjoy a trip to KSC, but I guess there are such people (poor close-minded souls).  When I went as a kid, I think we did the standard bus tour, and when I went as an adult, we sprung for the (I think it's called) "behind the scenes" bus tour, that gets you a bit closer.  Both tours are great, though.  We couldn't actually go on the pad, though, as there was a shuttle being prepped for launch (it had scrubbed the previous week and was still hanging around, so we were lucky in that regard).  It was awesome to see, and I would have loved to see a Saturn V upright on the pad, but I'm a couple decades too young for that.  We were at Universal Studios in Orlando in December, and I noted that there was going to be a Falcon 9 launch, so we made sure to be somewhere we could see the sky to the east, and indeed we got to see the flame from the rocket taking off.  From right next to the Knight Bus outside Diagon Alley.  We will be back in Orlando next week, and am hoping SpaceX gets their stuff together with Falcon Heavy and gives it a go while we're there - I'll try to see it from the park again.

TZ
 
I love seeing all this interest.  Being a FL, I grew up with all this in my backyard.  My grandparents lived in Titusvillle. Where was I for Apollo 11? On the shore across the inter coastal ffrom the launch pad.  Once they started using the Vs (vs the IBs), we drove over for the launch and helped my grandfathers business partner pull stuff off the wall and out of the curio cabinet (yes it was needed).

There’s a launch tonight. I still head out for them. 

 
Having a 10-year-old definitely helps on the finding-time-to-play-with-Legos front, as it shelters nicely under "Quality Time With The Boy"  :icon_biggrin:

We live in Southern Arizona (Tucson) and saw an inexplicably bright light go streaking across the sky last month, a bit of research yielded that it was a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg AFB in California. Given how impressive it was from our vantage (and it was impressive, lit up the sky!), I can't begin to imagine experiencing it from close proximity. "Bucket List" stuff, there...
 
Tonight was bags 3 and 4, which added some structural support and definition to the First Stage.

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I thought this part was just cooler than all get out. Those Lego engineers are pretty clever dudes....

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I decided to get "creative" and use the panoramic feature of my phone's camera to catch a cool vertical shot of the build so far. The results speak for themselves......  :icon_scratch:  :laughing11:

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I think you hit the switch that says "pancake view" instead of "panoramic view"  :icon_biggrin:
 
This is a fun project. I've always been fascinated by the space programs. Just think, some day this technology will fascinate people that it even worked. Great thread, here.

I love that diagram that explains the different parts of the rocket. Particularly:

"This end should point toward the
ground if you want to go into space

If it starts pointing toward space
you are having a bad problem and
you will not go into space today"
 
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