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Space continues to be a popular theme for budding Lego designers, and three new Lego Ideas submissions have rocketed onto our wish list. Will they get your vote?
Earlier this year, we looked at three space-themed Lego Ideas submissions: The Martian, NASA’s Space Launch System and a Kerbal Space Program Modular Ship System. While the Kerbal Space Program and SLS sets managed to garner enough votes to get in front of a Lego panel, unfortunately neither of them were approved to be made. There’s still hope for The Martian, however, which still has more than a year left to gather the number of votes it needs before it reaches the approval stage.
If you’re unfamiliar, 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 that they like. Once a set reaches 10,000 votes, it’ll be put in front of an official Lego panel. Lego holds two review periods yearly where 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 have come from the Ideas scheme. Did you know that the scale model of NASA Apollo Saturn V and the wonderful Tales of the Space Age set both started out life as creative ideas from Lego fans?
We’ve handpicked our three favorite space-themed Lego sets that are currently in the voting stage. Each of these designs are in that sweet spot where they still have time remaining (hundreds of days, even) to reach that all-important goal of 10,000 votes.
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A Pale Blue Dot by Voyager 1
You’ve probably heard of “A Pale Blue Dot” before. It’s a famous image of Earth taken from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990, so named by scientist Carl Sagan. It’s so-named because, in the image, our planet Earth appears as nothing more than a tiny, pale 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 its striped background and the way it’s framed as a piece of art. The difference here, though, is the emphasis on Voyager 1, a 3D object against a 2D backdrop. It’s framed in such a way that it’s designed to be stood on a desktop or shelf, with a chunky base to give it stability.
This isn’t Brickbaum’s first version of the Pale Blue Dot: They submitted a completely different design to Lego Ideas some years ago. They’ve recreated it from scratch, adding more detail to Voyager 1 and extra emphasis to the Pale Blue Dot itself. When asked why this would make a good Lego set, Brickbaum said “because it is extremely important that as many people as possible know the history of this image.” We don’t disagree.
Brickbaum submitted A Pale Blue Dot to Lego Ideas in April, and since then it’s received 833 votes of support (at the time of writing). The set is past the first milestone, and has nine months left to reach 1,000 supporters. At that point, its deadline will be extended again, giving it more time to secure the necessary 10,000 votes so it can appear before the Lego panel.
Learn more about A Pale Blue Dot by Voyager 1 over on Lego Ideas, and cast your vote.
Space Projection Telescope
Submitted to Lego Ideas by user CuteHackler036, the Space Projection Telescope appears to be, at first glance, a simple model of a telescope. It’s a very realistic model — complete with a tripod, a mount, an eyepiece, and a tracker — but it’s actually much more than that. While it’s 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, it can 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 proposes that a set of 10 different slides will be bundled with the telescope, including projections of Earth, Jupiter and its rings, a shooting star, and even an alien spacecraft.
From a more technical standpoint, the telescope comes with an adjustable tripod made out of Technic pieces and a mount that can be rotated. The telescope tube can also be angled, just like the real thing. It looks incredible, but it’s the technology involved here that’s really striking. CuteHackler0356 also states that the projection of the telescope can be made more powerful by using a flashlight instead of the light brick.
So far, over 2,000 people have pledged their support for the Space Projection Telescope. There’s another 500ish days for it to reach 10,000 votes before it can be judged by a Lego panel — and we really hope it gets there. Give your own vote of support on Lego Ideas.
The Moon: Lunar Landscape
The third of our space-themed Lego Ideas submissions might, in fact, be our favorite. Submitted by Marc Sloan, also known as SharkyBricks, The Moon: Lunar Landscape is a wall-mounted set showing detailed topography of the moon. Sloan calls it a “space poster,” and there’s definitely something about its design that makes us think of a retro-style educational poster: there’s a text tag in the bottom left, a scale ruler on the right, and even a lunar cycle shown underneath the beautifully-textured moon.
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It’s the second time that Sloan has submitted the Lunar Landscape to Lego Ideas. His first submission reached the all-important 10,000 votes mark, but it was rejected by the Lego reviews panel. Marc told us that the particular review he was part of had a record 71 designs, making his chances of success lower than ever. But he’s not been put off from trying again: Rather, he’s decided to rebuild Lunar Landscape from scratch, using only commercially available bricks with an updated color palette and higher level of accuracy.
Sloan tells us that designing The Moon: Lunar Landscape has been “both a labor of love and a technical challenge.” He’s had to balance scientific accuracy with a need to make the set eye-catching and visually pleasing, and getting it just right took “several iterations.” His latest submission is absolutely stunning, and we’re blown away by the details of the moon. So much so that it makes us wonder why Lego hasn’t made this before.
Since resubmitting Lunar Landscape in July, Marc has actually achieved his ultimate goal of 10,000 votes. You can check it out on Lego Ideas.
