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The Verge reports that Lego is to offer a kit for building a model Saturn V rocket.
[...] looks amazing because it’s not just the rocket: it’s an entire Apollo mission in a box. The Saturn V splits into its three stages, while the Command and Lunar Modules are nestled at the top. There’s even parts for the Command Capsule to land in the ocean, although you’re on your own if you want an aircraft carrier to pick up your crew. Fittingly, the set is made up of 1,969 individual pieces (the year the US first landed on the Moon), and it’s the tallest toy the company’s ever made, standing at a meter tall, or 110th the size of the original Saturn V rocket.
[...] The set is scheduled for release on June 1st, and will retail for $119.99 in the US (€119.99 in Europe and £109.99 in the UK).
Additional coverage:
- Ars Technica
- Culturess
- Gizmodo
- Florida Today
- CNET
- Business Insider
- New Atlas
- Engadget
- Mashable
- Popular Mechanics
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:24AM (8 children)
They ought to delay the release date to July 20 as well, to mark the 48th anniversary.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:28AM (1 child)
Regardless of the release date... I totally want one.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:13PM
Want one? I am going to GET one.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:39AM (5 children)
Yes, Legos need all those awesome rocket-kits with the tan uniforms and swastika armbands which made large-scale rocketry possible in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @03:31AM
The uniforms were grey and black, not tan.
And while I'm at it, you forgot to give credit to Robert Goddard.
Do us all a favor and jump off a high bridge over a freeway, you pathetic worthless loser fuck.
(Score: 5, Informative) by butthurt on Tuesday May 02 2017, @03:32AM
The Ars Technica article does acknowledge "Wernher von Braun and his engineers." I don't know why Lego won't include a figurine of him. Perhaps they wish to sell into the German market, or perhaps they fear that the figurine would be perceived as honouring Nazi misdeeds (e.g. starting World War II, committing mass murder).
In the Saturn V and the V-2 before it, Von Braun and the other Nazis built upon earlier work (emphasis mine):
Among [Tsiolkovsky's] works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, and closed-cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky#Scientific_achievements [wikipedia.org]
Three features developed by Goddard appeared in the V-2: (1) turbopumps were used to inject fuel into the combustion chamber; (2) gyroscopically controlled vanes in the nozzle stabilized the rocket until external vanes in the air could do so; and (3) excess alcohol was fed in around the combustion chamber walls, so that a blanket of evaporating gas protected the engine walls from the combustion heat.
[...] The Germans had been watching Goddard's progress before the war and became convinced that large, liquid fuel rockets were feasible.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Goddard [wikipedia.org]
Before 1939, German engineers and scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets,[8] named for the German word for mechanism or mechanical system.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket [wikipedia.org]
A less famous Nazi rocket engineer is Arthur Rudolph. He designed an ethanol-fuelled engine for the Nazis, then came to America:
He worked for the U.S. Army and NASA where he managed the development of several important systems including the Pershing missile and the Saturn V Moon rocket. In 1984 he was investigated for war crimes, and he agreed to leave the United States and renounce his US citizenship in return for not being prosecuted in the United States.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rudolph [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday May 02 2017, @12:50PM (1 child)
He was a good boy and didn't do nothing wrong. He aimed for the Moon but sometimes he hit London, that's just how it is sometimes.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 02 2017, @05:35PM
"when the rocket go up, who cares where they come down?
It's not my department, says Wernher Von Braun"
(Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:06AM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by messymerry on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:57AM (4 children)
Legos are outlandishly expensive. Here's an alternative idea: Get a Saturn V model rocket put a motor in it and go to the local open field and launch it:
http://www.estesrockets.com/rockets/kits/skill-4/002157-saturn-v [estesrockets.com] (Estes Rockets)
Well???
;-D
Only fools equate a PhD with a Swiss Army Knife...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:46AM
Did that long ago, but modified it to accept Aerotech 29mm motors. That sucker flew fast on an F40 instead of those kiddie Estes motors.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 02 2017, @12:47PM (2 children)
I had the Revell plastic model kit in the 70s/80s whatever it was. Amazon claims it sells for $60 today. I recognize the amazon 2017 pix of the somewhat unrealistic looking base the model sits on as being the exact plastic model I had in the 80s. Things move slow in plastic model world perhaps they're still using the same styrene plastic injection molds...
Note that 1/144 scale is pretty small for something like a car. Its about 12mm miniature wargaming equivalent size, warhammer 40K is about twice that size. Its close to but not exactly N scale model railroad ratio. So you can hold a little N scale 0-4-0 steam engine locomotive in your hand and its the size of a meatball or a flash drive (well, sorta) and you're thinking a 1/144 saturn V is going to be kinda small. Well, it turns out the Saturn V was so frigging gigantic that a 1/144 saturn V is about a meter or yard long. So no you can't balance it cutely on top of your monitor or sit it next to your mini-tower case, its pretty substantial.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Tuesday May 02 2017, @05:15PM (1 child)
Yeah Saturn 5's were gigantic.
I once thought about building one out of my own Legos and figured out that at the Lego mini-figure scale (~1:45) it would be about 8 feet tall, so I decides to build something else.
As for the price, this kit is around ~2000 pieces so $120 is actually pretty good deal, about $0.06 per piece, on average Lego sets sell for around $0.10 per piece.
I'm actually thinking about buying 2, one for play, and one to sell in a few years. Unopened Lego sets usually go up in value, especially if they are desirable to collectors as this one is likely to be.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:22PM
Unopened Lego sets usually go up in value,
cool, but be careful, thats really boomer or genx, my kids didn't do as much lego as I did, first because electronics and second because the prices are ridiculous, so its not like when I was a kid and we got three sets per christmas or whatever.
You might sell it to another parent but when my kids generation grows up I don't think you're going to squeeze a mortgage payment out of them or $10K or whatever prices have been going at to boomers.
Kind of like investing in baseball cards, that had its day and my kids respond to baseball cards with a pretty resounding kid version of WTF.
None the less, it still is pretty cool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:26PM
Now it's a (fuck) BETAesque waste of prime real estate!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:13AM
Let's have some cool SpaceX Falcon re-entry rocket instead :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:54PM
Not because Saturn V, which is completely frickin' wicked.
But because Lego. Why is it Lego everything, anymore? And yah, I had Legos as a kid and loved doing the space kits.
But if you're going for a Saturn V, why not get something that looks closer to real for less than half the price: https://www.amazon.com/Revell-Germany-Apollo-Saturn-Rocket/dp/B00G7G4EPI?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00G7G4EPI [amazon.com]
Or why not get one that ACTUALLY FLIES: https://www.amazon.com/Estes-2157-Saturn-Flying-Rocket/dp/B003ODIF34?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003ODIF34 [amazon.com]
Oh, because those two require ACTUAL SKILL to put together and paint. I got it. (And there are only three left of the Revell model, which sucks because I can't afford it for another couple of weeks.)