NASA

LEGO NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander

The Eagle Has Landed

June 15, 2019 Design Photos

Before I begin to write about the LEGO’s Lunar Lander, I thought I’d state a couple of reasons why this commemorative NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander (Creator – 10266) has come at a crucial moment. These are exciting times for space enthusiasts like myself. Firstly, India is preparing to launch the ambitious Chandrayaan-2 mission carrying an orbiter and a lunar rover (named ‘Pragyan’) to the southern pole of the Moon, making India the first nation to attempt landing a rover in that area. And also, we are closing in on the big event, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969. So following the Apollo Saturn V here was another Apollo mission engineering masterpiece from LEGO’s creative factory!

Apollo 11 Lunar Lander (Module)

I appreciated the dexterity required in building the Saturn V just this past month from exactly 1969 bricks and right to this day, I continue to look at the 3-ft tall structure as one of the greatest most creative designs to come out of the LEGO studio, yet. Honestly, I was unaware until the Internet started buzzing with the release in the European market of the ‘Apollo Lunar Lander’, which they thankfully launched this month. And unless they’re also planning to add the Command & Service Module into the mix before the anniversary date this would signal the end of the Apollo mission series showcasing NASA’s engineering expertise and the collaborative effort in sending the first humans to the Moon. In a nutshell, the iconic Apollo 11 mission consisted of the behemoth Saturn V which transported the astronauts to the Moon whilst the Lunar Lander placed the Apollo astronauts, most notably Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the lunar surface and brought them home safely.

This ‘Creator’ Lunar Lander is also special for one more reason — LEGO has worked with NASA in developing this design to mark the historic 50th Anniversary.

I spotted the Apollo Lunar Lander on display at the LEGO Store last week and it was difficult to ignore the temptation of adding it to my growing collection. However, to my pleasant surprise, in addition to the Lunar Lander I also received a ‘Space Rocket Ride’ toy, a LEGO ‘Apollo Lunar Lander’ patch — similar in feel to the ‘Eagle’ patch of the Apollo 11 (pictures in this post), and some miscellaneous items as promo offers for a limited time. The purchase was definitely sweetened with the addition of these extra bricks and added to my fun of building more LEGOs this time.

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Saturn V

Building the LEGO NASA Apollo Saturn V

May 2, 2019 Design Photos

It so happens that every time I pick a LEGO model I cannot help but feel anxious to see how the outcome might turn out. Although, to be honest, halfway through, the process starts feeling mundane when the activity doesn’t exactly line up with my expectations of achieving the target. This one philosophy of building a LEGO — that of navigating through untenable ambiguity, always provides me with the ultimate dopamine to take up & finish LEGO creations with patience. I call it ‘Brickosophy’. By no means would I consider building a LEGO an easy task of sticking the bricks together. It might seem like a simple job of following the guide book and following the detailed illustrations, but it’s not that straightforward too. It requires perseverance and bucket loads of patience.

You may have heard about the LEGO Ideas NASA Apollo Saturn V assembly and I will spare the details just to keep this concise, but I have to say, it was a fantastic experience assembling this marvellous engineering effort that transported humanity to the Moon and back to earth safely. So at one point while assembling this LEGO set and while I was completing the first stage itself the plans went awry because I fixed a single pivoting brick in the wrong hole. It sent me into a tizzy and after struggling to get it right I had to suspend my work for the day. I had to backtrack by disassembling the pieces. Such was this wonderful experience!

LEGO has put a great degree of emphasis in getting the details on the engineering elements in sync with the original Saturn design. I would like to think that the LEGO 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V is nothing less than a commemorative token celebrating the Apollo Missions and a must-have for any space enthusiast. There was so much nostalgia & pride in assembling this rocket, it’s only then that you recognize the Saturn V as a symbol of human engineering endeavour, apart from also being a reminder of the July 20, 1969 landing of the Apollo 11 on the Moon. No surprises though, but 2019 is also the 50th anniversary of the moon landing! So, in honouring the Saturn V’s contribution in Apollo missions through the moon landing, this LEGO set contains exactly 1969 pieces, which also makes it my biggest Lego assembly since the 578-brick Fire Plane that I build back in 2016. Take a look at the gorgeous images of the rocket I built, you’ll be amazed at how much LEGO has explored the details!

  • Close-up of the J-2 engine on the S-IVB stage.
  • The Lunar Module sitting atop the S-IVB in a typical Apollo-11 configuration.
  • The rugged LEGO interior of the S-1C stage. I'd the hardest time building this.
  • The Escape Tower on the (supposedly) Apollo Spacecraft (grey portion). Alaos called the "mothership". The LM Adapter is also visible.
  • The S-II stage of the Saturn V with 5 J-2 engines. It carried a combination of liquid hydrogen & liquid oxygen fuels.
  • Close-up of the S-IVB stage with the J-2 engine.
  • The gorgeous LEGO Saturn-V launch vehicle, standing at 3-feet tall! It contains 1969 pieces.
  • The 5 F-1 rocket engines on the S-1C stage.
  • The LEGO Saturn V box.
  • This isn't the engine of a rocket, primarily, just a detailed LEGO construction.
  • From L to R - Escape System, S-IVB stage, S-II stage, and S-1C stage. (front row, L to R) the Command Module & the Lunar Module.
  • Another view of the S-1C stage.
  • S-1C stage with the F-1 engines, and an actual human scale model of an astronaut figure.
  • The Lunar Module
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Energia/Buran

Buran – The End of The Space-Race Age

November 15, 2018 General

Exactly on this day, 30 years ago, the Soviet Union under the Buran programme (meaning “snowstorm}, or “blizzard”) launched the Orbiter K1 (or OK-1K1), a reusable spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in response to NASA’s space shuttle program. If the Sputnik marked the beginning of the space race, then the Buran ended it conclusively, and in the process proved once again that the Soviets could match, or even surpass, the technological prowess of the west on their own. As history suggests, NASA’s Space Shuttle programme had an enormous payload capacity, several times that of the previous US launch vehicles, which made the Soviet military suspicious about its military purposes which provoked them to build one of their own reusable spacecraft. But unfortunately, 1988 was the first and the only time that the unmanned OK-1K1 would lift-off and land in a fully automated mode, a first for any space shuttle variant. On the other hand, the Buran-class spacecraft used the expendable Energia super-heavy lift launch vehicles fitted with the RD-170 liquid-fuel rocket engines, considered the most powerful in the world even today. 

Despite its structural resemblance to NASA’s spaceplanes, the difference between the two orbiters was evident in the payload capacity in which, the Buran proved to be more efficient with a volume of over 90 tons which was due to the use of the Energia vehicle. All things considered, in spite of the ‘Cold War’ rivalry the Soviets developed a pretty advanced space vehicle to surprise the west again; who could forget the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144, the ‘Concordski‘. Quite disappointingly though, this fabulous spacecraft met with a climactic ending when the Buran OK-1K1 was destroyed in 2002 with the roof of its hangar at Baikonur collapsing and crushing underneath the lasting memories of the space-race era.
Buran vs STS Stats

A quick comparison of the OK-1K1 vehicle and the Space Shuttle

Featured Photo: Scale drawings of Russian cosmoplan complex Energia/Buran
NASA - The Sound of Earth Cover

NASA’s Golden Record Greetings

March 9, 2018 Happenings

I was keen on tuning in to an interesting set of greetings recorded in 55 languages which were sent aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1977 and intended for extraterrestrial life forms or future human beings, all the recordings are uploaded on Soundcloud. The greetings apart, the ‘Voyager Golden Record’ contains images and other natural sounds from the Earth, besides an official statement from the then US President Jimmy Carter. Not many would fathom but this was truly a history in the making.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.[/perfectpullquote]

I hadn’t the faintest idea what those recordings were until I heard them for the first time on Soundcloud. I thought they were simply “hellos” recorded in different languages, but since I understand some Indian languages I could interpret them clearly in the manner that I grasped their meaning.

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Stuff I Didn’t Know About This Image of India

December 15, 2017 General

I am passionate about anything that is even remotely related to space, and this one has stuck with me since schooldays. So, as a kid from India in the 80s’, I would ponder endlessly over this satellite imagery on the back of my geography textbook probably the 6th or 7th grade, that showed the Indian peninsula alongside the island nation of Sri Lanka. All along I was curious to know the origins of this photo, like, who captured it? What was that strange pole? etc., and I was thrilled to have stumbled upon a NASA website carrying this information.

India - Gemini 11 Photo

Picture of peninsular south India was taken from space in the 60s!

So this image was taken by the Gemini 11 crew (Conrad-Gordon) on September 14, 1966 “using a 70 mm lens on a modified Hasselblad film camera”, and I don’t know why but it somehow made it to the geography school textbooks in India and into my inquisitive mind. And as I discovered later, that “strange pole” in the picture is the “7-FT Retractable L-Band Boom Antenna” from the Agena Target Vehicle.

Source: India by Night and Day : Image of the Day