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Space continues to be a popular theme for aspiring Lego designers, and three new Lego Ideas entries have appeared on our wish list. Will they get your vote?
Earlier this year we looked at three space-themed Lego Ideas entries: The Martian, NASA’s Space Launch System, and a Kerbal Space Program Modular Ship System. Although the Kerbal Space Program and SLS sets managed to garner enough votes to make it to a Lego panel, unfortunately neither was approved to be made. However, there is still hope for The Martian, which still has more than a year to go to gather the number of votes it needs before reaching the approval stage.
If you’re not familiar, the Lego Ideas initiative allows any amateur designer to submit their own idea for a Lego set. Once a user’s design appears on the Lego Ideas website, along with many others, the public can vote for the designs they like. Once a set reaches 10,000 votes, it will be placed in front of an official Lego panel. Lego holds two judging periods each year during which a small number of sets are chosen to be made into a retail Lego set and sold in stores.
In our opinion, some of the best Lego space sets come from the Ideas program. Did you know that the NASA Apollo Saturn V scale model and the beautiful Tales of the Space Age set both started life as creative ideas from Lego fans?
We’ve picked our three favorite space-themed Lego sets that are currently in the voting phase. Each of these designs is in a sweet spot where they still have time left (hundreds of days, in fact) to reach that all-important goal of 10,000 votes.
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A light blue dot from Voyager 1
You’ve probably heard of ‘A Pale Blue Dot’ before. It is a famous image of Earth taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990, so named by scientist Carl Sagan. It is so called because our planet Earth in the image is nothing more than a small, light blue dot. And this Lego concept, submitted to Lego Ideas by Brickbaum, aims to recreate that image – along with a build of Voyager 1 itself.
The set reminds us of the Tales of the Space Age set released last year, thanks to the striped background and the way it’s framed like a piece of art. The difference here, however, is the emphasis on Voyager 1, a 3D object against a 2D background. It is framed so that it is designed to sit on a desk or shelf, with a sturdy base for stability.
This isn’t Brickbaum’s first version of the Pale Blue Dot: they submitted a completely different design to Lego Ideas a few years ago. They created it from scratch, adding more detail to Voyager 1 and putting extra emphasis on the Pale Blue Dot itself. When asked why this would be a good Lego set, Brickbaum said “because it is extremely important that as many people as possible know the history of this statue.” We don’t disagree.
Brickbaum submitted A Pale Blue Dot to Lego Ideas in April and has since received 833 votes of support (at the time of writing). The set has passed its first milestone and still has nine months to reach 1,000 supporters. At that point, the deadline will be extended again, giving it more time to secure the necessary 10,000 votes so it can appear before the Lego panel.
Read more about A Pale Blue Dot from Voyager 1 on Lego Ideas and cast your vote.
Space projection telescope
The Space Projection Telescope, submitted to Lego Ideas by user CuteHackler036, appears at first glance to be a simple model of a telescope. It’s a very realistic model – complete with a tripod, a holder, an eyepiece and a tracker – but it’s actually much more than that. Although not quite a working telescope, light can actually travel through the telescope and, using a very nifty combination of a projector slide and a light brick, project a space-themed image onto a surface in front of it.
If that doesn’t impress you, we don’t know what will. CuteHackler036 suggests that a set of ten different slides come with the telescope, including projections of Earth, Jupiter and its rings, a shooting star, and even an alien spacecraft.
From a more technical point of view, the telescope comes with an adjustable tripod made from Technic pieces and a swivel mount. The telescopic tube can also be angled, just like the real thing. It looks incredible, but it’s the technology involved here that really stands out. CuteHackler0356 also states that the telescope’s projection can be made more powerful by using a flashlight instead of the light brick.
To date, more than 2,000 people have pledged their support for the Space Projection Telescope. There are still 500 days until it gets to 10,000 votes before it can be judged by a Lego panel – and we really hope it gets there. Send your own message of support to Lego Ideas.
The moon: lunar landscape
The third of our space-themed Lego Ideas entries might just be our favorite. The Moon: Lunar Landscape, submitted by Marc Sloan, also known as SharkyBricks, is a wall-mounted set featuring detailed topography of the moon. Sloan calls it a “space poster,” and there’s certainly something about the design that reminds us of a retro-style educational poster: There’s a text tag on the bottom left, a scale ruler on the right, and it even shows a moon cycle. under the beautifully structured moon.
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This is the second time Sloan has submitted the moonscape to Lego Ideas. His first entry reached the all-important 10,000 vote mark, but was rejected by the Lego review panel. Marc told us that the particular review he took part in had a record 71 designs, making his chances of success slimmer than ever. But that won’t stop him from trying again: instead, he’s decided to build the moonscape from scratch, using only commercially available bricks with an updated color palette and a higher level of accuracy.
Sloan tells us that designing The Moon: Lunar Landscape was “both a labor of love and an engineering challenge.” He had to balance scientific accuracy with the need to make the set eye-catching and visually appealing, and getting it just right required “several iterations.” His latest entry is absolutely stunning and we are in awe of the details of the moon. So much so that we wonder why Lego didn’t make this sooner.
Since submitting Lunar Landscape again in July, Marc has reached his ultimate goal of 10,000 votes. You can check it out on Lego Ideas.