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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, 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