Lego ISS | Hacker News Reader

Lego ISS

collectspace.com

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I built the Saturn V model a couple of years ago when it came out - a lot of fun and it now stands in pride of place in the corner of my office.

This model intrigues me, but it would be a b*tch to store/display once made though... I wonder why LEGO didn't just respond to the plethora of customer requests to make the LUT (tower) for the Saturn V model? It would have been just as many parts and would have complemented the rocket model.

I would absolutely buy a set for the tower. Like you I bought and built the rocket, and have it on display in my apartment, but having it stand vertically next to a tower would be so much cooler than the little stilts it's on right now. Sounds like a fun weekend project though, do you know of any good unofficial instructions?

I found a few sites that described how to build the LUT out of standard pieces. There was a guy selling a 'kit' on eBay which comprised of some instructions as well as the standard parts all bagged up, but it was super expensive (around $250 from memory). I will see if I can still find the URLs (if they are still around).

EDIT: Looks like these guys do a LUT kit: https://www.welightbrick.com/products/nasa-saturn-v-launch-u...

They are very careful not to mention what type of bricks are in their kits. Do you know if they’re reselling genuine Lego? Or a third-party “clone” of Lego bricks?

They likely just want you to buy the whole thing from them instead of doing it yourself.

Possibly. But there are a lot of Lego-compatible third-party bricks out there, and lots of people online selling kits made from non-Lego bricks.

I generally have no problem with this, as it allows certain types of kits to exist that Lego wouldn’t otherwise make. It’s no longer my bag, but for example Lego generally avoid military models, but third-party Lego-compatible sets fill the void.

On the other hand, Lego are—to my knowledge—the only brick manufacturer licensed to produce Star Wars kits, and this company is advertising a Tie Bomber.

Lego doesn’t currently make such a kit, but you can’t go around selling Star Wars kits without having a certain flair for playing very fast and loose with IP. Which leads me to want to double-check before placing any order for any kit.

I’m not saying that other bricks are bad, but I do want to know exactly what I’m buying before making a decision.

IIRC last I looked at it making the LUT out of genuine Lego was next to impossible due to the number and rarity of some pieces.

I know there is a Lepin set for the LUT which I bought a few weeks back for $160~. Despite being massive IP thieves they do make decent enough bricks, the QC certainly isn't on par with Lego and I've had a few (1's out of 1000's) being a bit loose or mis-moulded but I'll happily buy sets from them for non Lego designs and track down the designs and pay the author for the instructions separately if available.

“Massive IP Thieves” is one way to put it, “Liberators of our modern fairy tales” is another. But it both amuses and troubles me when companies like this make their logo look an awful lot like the Lego logo, and call their sets things like “Execytor Star Destroyer” (sic).

It’s one thing to make something compatible with Lego, that’s perfectly legitimate. It’s another thing to make unlicensed Star Wars sets. My heart does not bleed for Disney’s shareholders, not one iota.

But I’m troubled by anything that looks like it’s set up to fool buyers into thinking that they’re getting a genuine Lego product. The Lepin logo crosses that line for me, their sets do not.

> The Lepin logo crosses that line for me, their sets do not.

Maybe they'll eventually go the way the vast majority of knockoff ATMega328 Arduino makers did; at first, many copied everything down to the logo (first with the Duemilanove, then the Uno - prior versions weren't copied afaik), colors, everything. Most of the time poorly. A few did as the license allowed - copied everything except for the name and some other key things. Those were legit knockoffs.

Some eventually started changing up the colors, adding features, coming up with their own branding and names; eventually some moved into making their own "custom boards" that had no connection with the Arduino other than being compatible. Most would (and still do) advertise as being "Arduino" or "Arduino-compatible", or they use some variant of "-duino" in their name (which actually makes no sense once you learn where the name came from - and originally Massimo and the others implored people not to use such naming - but that didn't last)...

Today, there are few actual counterfeiters of the boards - but knockoffs are a-plenty. And the nice thing is, the companies that "knockoff" the designs actually keep some of the discontinued models still going. With the org now moving toward 32-bit microcontrollers and moving away from the old 8-bit ATMega line, those manufacturers may be the only way in the future of getting these lower-cost boards which still can satisfy most use-cases, which 32-bit based boards would be overkill for (short of just buying the raw 328 controller and custom-building your own compatible).

So maybe today Lepin is crossing the line - but maybe over time they'll move to their own - but still compatible - system (to be honest, based on what I've seen on Amazon with some of the more "technical" STEM kits they and other manufacturers are making, that's the direction they seem to be moving in).

Some knockoff builders do keep older sets alive. I bought a knockoff of the original UCS Falcon. It was fun to build, and it wasn’t USD 2,000 on eBay.

I have also bought sets related to the Alien(s) and Blade Runner movies, sets that simply weren’t available in a licensed fashion at all. I obviously have zero problem with that.

Just about the only thing that gives me pause is that I prefer when they knock off the subject but resell genuine bricks. That way, if I tire of the model, the pieces go into the family lego bins.

I’m not ready to “cross the streams” and mix Lego blocks with knockoff blocks.

In absence of a tower, how about this display solution: https://old.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/eo2ufs/my_attempt_at_...

Wow. That's simply fabulous. I'm seriously considering copying this idea now.

That looks really cool. Only thing missing is the steam coming off.

Another angle from further down that thread: https://external-preview.redd.it/mmt_drJQ7vWZi6Uu-DHLx5JaUTp...

There are some really good fan-created plans for LUTs, including a spectacular 8000-piece one by Nathan Readioff. PM me for pix and other info.

Because such a set would lack playability and have zero mass appeal (you would never buy this set stand alone). There was an Idea submission for such a set and it was rejected bu Lego: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/a88109ec-9970-4fe1-98b4-9bd5...

The ISS model specifically says it's for adults, 16+, so playability isn't a huge deal.

Additionally IMO they're missing the boat by sticking to their classic distribution model that has the restraints you say. I mean sure, some sets aren't fit for shelf space in a Target toy aisle, but they should be able to JIT packaging for just about any set that's had the work put in as long as they don't run afoul of trademark.

i hope someone will build a thingiverse like site where you can upload any model design and order the necessary bricks to build it.

there won't be a trademark issue for the brick producer, as they are only delivering an assortment of bricks. the model design comes from elsewhere.

trademark may be enforced against uploaders of protected designs, but that is no problem as the design can still be shared elsewhere and it can't outright prevent anyone from ordering a certain assortment of bricks.

What about BrickLink?

actually, what i was thinking of is more like https://rebrickable.com, where i can select a model and the buy the bricks for it.

A bit too small imho. Go big or go home. I want a space shuttle big enough for lego figures, and same scale space station.

Yeah, right? I was expecting a price point around hundreds! You know, something that makes you say, that's cool, but I ain't buyin' that! (Yet)

At about 1:40, the ISS would be about 2.5 meters by 1.8 meters. I doubt they would sell many, unless it were made of Lego Duplo.

Pretty sure that would be the physically largest retail set ever sold if they did the minifig scale of 1:45 (ish) [0]. Looks like they might be making it roughly microfig scale judging by the scale of the included microfigs vs the rest. I'd rather maybe double the current size for more detail and chances for little greeble details but this size does make it easy to justify even with my current set backlog.

[0] It's a little messy because minifigs are quite squat and wide compared to their height.

> microfig

Had to look that up[0], since I haven't closely been keeping up with LEGO since my childhood, and for now lack children of my own to renew interest. Interesting concept, but it doesn't look like they're still "officially" used?

EDIT: Oh, the article states that this set comes with two microfigs. My bad, I should pay closer attention next time!

[0] https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Microfigure

I was wrong about the name the wiki seems to call what's included in the ISS set Nanofigures. Though it seems like places use both nanofig and microfig interchangeably since microfigs are discontinued.

https://rebrickable.com/parts/90398/minifig-trophy-statuette...

https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Nanofigure

https://www.firestartoys.com/Shop/LEGO-Minifigures/LEGO-Nano...

So they're about 1:125-140. And this set is about 1:225.

Also that shuttle is absolutely not to scale. It's about 1:400.

Ah yeah I was just eyeballing it and the nanofigs did seem a bit big. It's tricky because going up just double size probably doesn't give them much chance to add more detail the way people would want and 4x would make it way too large and expensive.

Someone has done a great one though a couple years ago at 1:90~ scale (1.2 meters by .8 meters): https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/7h9f18/lego_internati...

As an AFOL that has done my fair share of MOCs, the thought of that (or at 1:40) hurts my wallet, I did a small Mars base MOC that fit on a single 32x32 baseplate and for the elements I was using to get the habitat shape I wanted I was ended up spending a little north of 95$. I wanted to make a vehicle and a rocket as well but I was looking at another 75-100$ each.

My pretty boring MOC Mars habitat and initial thoughts on how I'd go about attempting a permanent presence on Mars: https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/29/my-lego-m...

If there's anything you ever want to see in lego, just google "MOC thing/theme" MOC being 'my own creation'. Chances are pretty good that an AFOL (adult fan of lego) has either built it with real elements or at least done it in LEGO Digital Designer or the (arguably) better Studio https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/download.page

Also PartDesigner is great for making custom elements and importing into Studio if you don't want to be a purist https://www.bricklink.com/v3/build/partdesigner.page

That's ~5x the size of the planned ISS set. So if you scale up the set, you would need ~125x as many pieces or ~$8750 for ~100k bricks.

I suspect it'd be more spindly than that if scaled up. I'd bet it'd scale more to the 2nd than the 3rd power, so more like $1750.

I'm not capable of calculating scale of lego but just to fit one lego guy inside and being able to open up sections of the modules with hinges would be enough.

That would require its own room, though.

Or a tall ceiling to hang it from.

I am hoping this is just an introductory set, and if the demand is there they would make a bigger one. I am with you. I want a detailed set. 3000+ pieces

If you wanted to do one yourself, without waiting for an official set first I'd go look at this one (and the NASA one linked in the comments) that is 1:90 scale at 1.2 meters by .8 meters: https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/7h9f18/lego_internati...

Then go download Studio and start tinkering digitally https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/download.page

When you got something you like, you can use studio to generate instructions and to buy the elements from sellers on Bricklink.

There is a space shuttle lego set in existence that is big enough for that. It is absolutely massive - and at that scale, I think the ISS would be absolutely unwieldy.

most lego models are to small for the size of the figures. (i mean, come on, a train that can't even seat two figures in parallel, feels totally unrealistic)

the minifigure dimensions are just completely off, so you can't expect a lot of realism here. i am happy if models are big enough that they are actually playable, and look like the real thing from the outside.

if there is one model where the scale issue is what's absolutely putting me off, it's the death-star. that thing is so far off its real dimensions that it just looks ridiculous to me.

Wow. I grew up in the early 80's building Lego Space sets -- all Lego men in spacesuits and shapeships and space stations, but all fictional.

It kind of blows my mind a bit to see a real-life space station built with Legos now.

I mean, I know they've had a space shuttle and rocket sets for a while, but those were still just somehow fundamentally "earth-bound". (And Lego never did make a Skylab set.)

But a space station... for some reason that just feels more properly futuristic in a way. And in a Lego set, almost like fiction finally coming to life somehow.

Based on the price per kg to get to iss, how much would it cost to send this up there and have it gently placed into a parallel orbit with candarm2?

Unfortunately I cannot find a weight for the set on either this website or LEGO's official website.

Are 'parallel orbits' actually possible without active station keeping? (Thinking of Seveneves).

No. The orbital plane must intersect the (bary)center of Earth.

If you took that model and placed it to the right of ISS, with matching altitude and velocity vectors, then half the orbital period later, you'd find it somewhere to the left of the station.

If you want to keep two things close together in orbit for a while without active stationkeeping, your best bet is placing one ahead or behind of the other. Though in real life, they'll eventually drift their separate ways too, due to lots of small influences like solar pressure, residual air drag, gravitational pull of other bodies in the system, etc.

Even worse, the actual ISS requires active stationkeeping, making it unreliable w/r/t celestial mechanics alone.

Wouldn't there be considerable slipstream from the trace atmosphere? Aft, slightly higher than the stations center of mass there should be a point were the slower angular speed of the minimally higher orbit would cancel out with the slipstream effect, until the next stationkeeping burn. I wonder how much it would start spinning from the uneven application of trace atmosphere in that time.

Might make a fun public experiment, try getting "the internet" to voice their predictions, kind of like everybody was commenting on the color of the dress. In any case I fully expect a kit to eventually make it up there but I doubt that it will see any EVA.

They didn't send it up this far but it still looks pretty cool: https://twitter.com/LEGO_Group/status/1219636329035837441

A 2x4(x1) lego brick (3001) weighs around 2.32 grams. Inflate it to 3 x 864 pieces and a good estimate is 2kg but based on the visible elements I'm betting more like 1kg.

Like, those 2x2 tiles (3068) are 0.5g each, those 8x3 flags (35252) for some of the PV panels are 2.75g each etc.

There was an ISS set built on the real ISS, but it needed to be disassembled after two hours due to the fire hazard. Unfortunately, that version can't be built on the ground: "It's a solid model but I believe it can't bear its own weight under gravity,"

> Made up of hundreds of bricks, the model was launched in partially-preassembled "chunks" to help make up for the difficulties working with very small pieces in microgravity. The space station could not be launched fully-assembled, because like the real orbiting outpost, it could only be built in space.

> The LEGO station's time fully assembled was short lived however. Due to the flammability hazards, the toy bricks could only be exposed to the open cabin air for two hours.

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-022412a.html

My son and I love building lego together, especially the robotic type, but I often worry about the tremendous amounts of plastic waste being created with every lego sold. I guess it pales in comparison to plastic bottles, but still. We are turning the earth into a giant trash heap.

Lego last long and are repurposable. I personally think they are not really meant to be built according to instructions in the long term. It's the same way a framework is not meant to do a todo app. It's something the kid does on first pass when learning how the system works, before starting on the actual cool stuff.

There's kind of two types of sets made today the play sets for kids and display sets for adult collectors. I do agree though that LEGO isn't really plastic waste because most of it doesn't get thrown out and kids collections get reused and resold to collectors and are relatively rarely thrown out.

in my experience the original model is built once and then rarely ever again.

I feel that compared to virtually every other use of plastic, Lego is probably the most benign. Compared to other toys, it is better built, lasts longer, doesn't need batteries, doesn't use obsolete/deprecated protocols, isn't fashionable / faddish, and is therefore typically used for a long time by a child through the years and then frequently reused by several people/families/generations.

My son is still playing with basic Lego bricks that were my older cousin's bricks in the 80's. The amount of plastic waste we've caused and gone through in the last 40 years is many many many orders of magnitude higher than those few sets :|

our kids lego goes back th the late 70s. some may even be older because already then we were getting lego second hand. my dad kept our lego and passed it on to my kids, and when they grow up i will do the same and keep the lego for my grandkids.

we'll pass this from generation to generation until the plastic degrades to unplayability.

It is a concern that they also hold. They are working on some sort of fix [0] (I warn you their website is annoying). One quote from their website:

"The LEGO Group aims to send zero waste to landfill by 2025, and in 2018 recycled 93% of all waste from our operations. Additionally, 100% of all plastic waste produced during the moulding of LEGO® bricks was recycled. This includes reusing some of the plastic resin in our own processes, as well as sending some of the waste to suppliers to be recycled and turned into other plastic products."

This is just an overview of their plans but I also remember seeing an interview with their CEO talking about how many different types of materials are trying to address the waste.

[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility/sustainabi...

Zero waste is a great goal but not the full picture. If Lego is getting thrown out after each kids out grows it then it'd be a pretty big waste problem. Luckily because they last a long time and are perfectly inter-operable I don't think that many get just tossed. I see a lot resold and reused.

LEGO announced that by 2030 they want their bricks to be made sustainably and from recycled materials, so we’re getting there! https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility/sustainabi...

My kids play with the bricks I used to play with as a kid. So usually they last for at least 2 generations. And in between, lot's of cousins have played with them.

How many other plastic toys have such a long replayability?

There's usually no reason to ever put Lego blocks on the trash heap. They last forever and they're easy to resell locally by the bag when you're done. There's also a vibrant global secondary market of online used Lego block resellers (Bricklink, etc.).

I wonder, have they confused the (big) radiators with (small) solar panels? It certainly looks so in the box package!

Looks really accurate to me; the box shows blue/flat solar-arrays and white corrugated radiators in the usual places.

Nope looks pretty much dead on to me. See [0] for the real ISS vs [1] for the box art. The relative scales are a little off due to the available pieces (the larger radiators are pretty big compared to the solar arrays).

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Internat...

[1] http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012120g-lg.jpg

Ah, I stand corrected, thank you. My mental image of the ISS was somewhat distorted, it seems. And I had no idea the main solar panels could pivot to align with the large radiators!

(For instance, here we can see both solar panels not completely aligned: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=iss+radiator&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=...)

I didn't know the smaller radiators existed at all TBH. Makes sense though since they're on the same structure as the solar panels it would ensure those are basically always in the shade more or less since the solar panels will want to align perpendicular to the sun. As for the solar panels they can rotate each individually around it's long axis and the group of 4 at each end as a unit around the long axis of the truss.

It's great to see Lego innovating in this way, I wonder how much less business they do nowadays given the proliferation of mobile/digital gaming and social media keeping the new generations pretty occupied!

Sets like these are targeted mostly at adult "geek" collectors and maybe represent less than 1% of total sales. The Ninjago, City and Creator themes have been quite strong in the last decade, at least from my observations as an occasional gift buyer.

That it is reasonably priced makes it all the better. While I can afford otherwise I always find them more enticing when they don't go past a hundred dollars.

As a parent of a 6 year old, Lego is still pretty hugely popular (arguably even more so than it was 20ish years ago). The Lego section of most toy stores is front and centre, and it's a super common gift for younger kids.

I could definitely see kids aging out of Lego earlier than they used to, though.

Lego is now the biggest toy manufacturer in the world as well as the most valuable: https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/general/lego-worlds-larg...

Lego do - of course - have the mostly excellent LEGO [Franchise] here video games too.

"I'm playing both sides, so that I always come out on top"

Having seen the sheer amount of Lego my nephews receive for birthdays/christmas I'm gonna say Lego are doing just fine. With that said I'm sure the Licensed sets have helped their bottom line for sure.

I'd much rather see them skip some of these gimmicky adult collector initiatives and get back to some of their core themes. They are so overwhelmed with licensed IP that they are nearly a merchandising wing of Disney at present.

I agree. As a kid the fun in Lego was to make specific things out if generic shapes. The special sets sounded like amazing before you got them, but turn into just more Lego once you had done the recomende constructions.

Lego robotics was a good indication, again generic pieces you can use you imagination to build specific things.

Unless you really mind the solar panel texture, this set seems to be almost entirely nice generic pieces.

The Lego Classic kits they're selling these days are some of the best generic kits they've ever made IMHO. Good mix of general purpose bricks with a well-selected smattering of interesting (but still reasonably versatile) more specialized parts, at reasonable prices.

Less!? They’re the largest toy maker in the world. Also the largest tire manufacturer (by pieces produced).

Well I'd assume they're doing better than ever. With a reality tv show coming out.

https://www.fox.com/lego-masters/

So, when do we get a SpaceX kit??

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba...

Needs 800 more supporters to reach the 10k threshold.

This apparently comes with a little dragon capsule.

Oh wow a lego story makes it to the frontpage of HN :)

Not my fav lego set, but I guess some people really like it

I'm more excited about the upcoming LEGO Ideas pirate creek set

Oh there's been LEGO on here before alright: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14253672

I bought that set and loved every minute of building it. Highly recommended!

A set with some future collecting potential maybe, but not the kind of structure Lego bricks are good for. The scale is too miniscule and the build lacks any substantial level of detail, and it's also a very repetitive structure.

Used to have a KNex model of the ISS when growing up, it was great for someone who was dreaming of going to space :)

I desperately want this but would have nowhere to display it. Does anyone know what the production lengths of Lego Ideas sets are? Am I likely to be able to buy this in a year or two, or is this going to be the only opportunity?

Buy it now,put the box under your bed and once you have where to display, you'll do.

And even if you forget about it, say 20 years :), you might have a nice investment laying under the bed.

Do lego sets appreciate?

Generally yes. More for the collector sets like the older UCS Millenium Falcon (though the price for that might have fallen since the new one was released).

There's a whole niche of websites that track and forecast prices of old Lego sets. Check out BrickEconomy for example.

From what I've seen recently, Lego Ideas sets tend to have a lifetime of about 1-2 years, but can become harder to find later in the cycle as I think their production runs are a bit shorter. Regular models tend to be 1-3 years from what I've seen.

I believe if you have a Lego account and show some interest, maybe liking or adding to cart or something, they send you a notification when it's retiring. I've had a few "retiring soon" emails from them but I'm not sure exactly what triggered that.

Useful info thanks!

It's a space station. Just hang it from the ceiling anywhere.

It looks like you can flatten it vertically on the stand so I'm planning to put it on the windowsill in my apartment next to my Saturn v, falcon 9 and falcon heavy.

A year after the Curiosity rover, they were out of stock and being resold at a handy markup on ebay. Hopefully the 2020 rover will get a model too so I can get it in time. I'd advise not to sleep on this.

The last time I was in the Lego store in Bellevue WA the sales clerk was actively encouraging me to buy four or five of a Star Wars item and to sell them on eBay for profit.

I wonder if it was designed with strong attachment points for hanging it from the ceiling.

I just wish it was to-scale with the LEGO Space Shuttle I had as a kid.

my first thought was : please let me add real solar cells on this and make it a "light + sound" revival unit

Side note: I love web design like this over the huge amount of white space + magenta gradients in contemporary react apps that take 9 seconds to load. The modern web app, what monster have we created!

I like the technology stack, the design, not so much: it looks like it assumes a certain screen width, so that I get either:

- Too much black space on the right if fullscreen

- An empty red column on the left, and I must scroll to the right to see the text if tiled.

Moreover, there is still a lot of javascript on the page for ads, tracking (google analytics), youtube, so it could be faster. I see a lot of minimalist, well-written contemporary blogs as well; it mostly seems to be marketing websites that have bloated out of proportions.

You're right, it does assume a certain screen width and doesn't scale at all in any way. I was also thinking when I returned to HN from the article that I couldn't actually read HN because the white-on-black was such an extreme colour scheme, my eyes took about 10 seconds to adjust.

Ok, some responsive design wouldn't exactly hurt (zooming in one-handed on my phone on a shaky bus took me longer than a bloated "modern" web site would take to load), but I definitely agree with your sentiment. No cookie warnings, no full-screen popups, no sluggish animations and yes, no huge margins that turn my rather large phone screen into a 3310.

I didn't find it difficult to use one-handed at all. Double-tapped on the text which zoomed it to perfect reading width, then double-tapped again to zoom out and double-tapped on the images to have a look at those. Not sure what phone you're using but I think those gestures are universal?

I was using the WebView in Materialistic (Android HN reader app) which is known to be rather janky. The double tap gesture just zooms to some fixed value there and I had to manually adjust it. Not a big deal and even less so with most browsers' intelligent zooming or various "reading views", but still, being readable by default is a substantially better experience.

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