Lego's Space Shuttle Discovery: No trouble with Hubble, but the stickers will drive a grown man to insanity

Despite scratched silver blocks and a woeful VIP programme, The Register has built Lego's new Space Shuttle Discovery - and we never want to see another silver sticker again. Discovery shuttle set Click to enlarge There was a certain inevitability regarding the Lego Space Shuttle set. The plastic brick behemoth had already …

[Korev]

The author was bricking himself about the stickers...

[Paul S. Gazo]

Yeah, that's (repeatedly) overstated. I mean, yeah, a 9-year-old might not have the patience but I got it done flawlessly without water, or tools, or even particular trouble. They were rigid enough that one end could be aligned at the back, then they could just be laid down.

That said, the rest of the article is pretty much spot-on. I've even ordered 3,000+ bricks to build a booster/tank set to go with it.

[druck]

My 5 1/2 year old didn't wait for me to help with the stickers and did an amazing job on a pair of Lego city racing cars, his 7 1/2 year brother still got me to help with the ones on his Lego Ninjago dragon.

BTW: I know what I'm asking Santa for this Christmas now.

[The Boojum]

Curse you, Mr. Speed!

I enjoyed the review and thought, 'Oh. I'd rather like that.' So when I read that it had sold out I was somewhat pleased, as that meant I could have the vicarious pleasure of wanting it but not being able to actually buy it.

Then I looked on the Lego store and it is in stock. So now I can buy it. But I don't know where I would put it. And I've still got two big Technic kits to build.

So again curse you, Mr. Speed. My your life be full of silver Lego stickers. (Not really :))

[The Boojum]

Re: Curse you, Mr. Speed!

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Some minutes later

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Double-curse you, Mr, Speed! I've just ordered it. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

[chivo243]

Re: Curse you, Mr. Speed!

Everything is Awesome! Are you a MasterBuilder? Join the team!

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Curse you, Mr. Speed!

SPacEshIp!

[Aladdin Sane]

No mention of the rather splendid Lego Technic 8480? For shame

[Paul Kinsler]

Lego Technic 8480

That does indeed look /very/ nice.

[Chris Gray 1]

Re: Lego Technic 8480

Yes, it is very nice. I haven't put mine together for some time - perhaps it is getting time to do so again. It's another of the wonderful sets with an electric motor and a transmission with a "gearshift" to control what is getting powered. Plus the lever that raises and lowers all of the landing gear together. And, it uses one of the fairly rare "micro motors" to allow opening/closing of the solar panels on the satellite, as it is attached to the Canadarm. Others may prefer the pulsing light coming from the exhausts, courtesy of some optical tubing and a powered distributor.

There *are* some available on Bricklink, if you care to spend the money:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=8480-1#T=S&O={%22iconly%22:0}

[awavey]

or the 6339 Shuttle Launch Pad, which even came with a launch tower,crawler and launch control

[TheProf]

Welcome back

I bought this from my friendly local Lego shop. Lego were doing a 'Welcome Back' promotion so along with a big wodge of Shuttle bricks I came home with a couple of simple to build bag kits, an ice rink kit and an Amelia Earhart Lockheed Vega 5B kit.

I'd joined the VIP program and earned enough points to get the Ulysses model but that was well gone by the time I'd got to the Lego web site.

Looking at the estimated cost of buying the bricks to build Ulysses (£21.24) I think I'll might just order the bricks and follow the instructions from Rebrickable.

I wonder how many ice rink pieces are common to the Ulysses?

[TheProf]

Re: Welcome back

Oh bugger. Those curved outer panels in yellow aren't available to buy from Lego.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Welcome back

Eee, when I were a lad... Lego came in a handful rectangular brick shapes, a couple of flat panels, and if you were lucky, a window or door. And everything was white, green, red, or blue.

The very very lucky got a clockwork motor.

And you try and tell the young folk today...

[acousticm]

Re: Welcome back

A door ... luxury ... we had to leave a gap in the wall and pretend .....

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Welcome back

I thought Stonehenge was your Lego?

[Timbo]

Re: Welcome back

"Eee, when I were a lad... Lego came in a handful rectangular brick shapes, a couple of flat panels, and if you were lucky, a window or door. And everything was white, green, red, or blue."

By 'eck, when *I* were a lad we coudn't afford Lego, so we had to make do with Betta Bilda, which was made by Airfix

The bricks were much smaller than Lego and mostly were White...they even came with bases onto which the bricks were fixed so as to stop the "building" from falling apart.

BUT they came with doors and windows :-) They also were supplied with roof tiles that clipped together.

Later sets had wheels so you could build vehicles as well as houses/garages etc.

https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Betta_Bilda

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Welcome back

And when I were a lad we used to make fun of the poor kids in rags and with holes in their shoes whose parents could only afford Betta Bilda bricks.

Because we Lego Kids of the 1960's not only had doors and windows and proper roof tiles but we had battery powered trains sets too.

http://oldinstructions.com/belgium-1967-1968-lego-catalogues/

[Timbo]

Re: Welcome back

"...we had battery powered trains sets too"

Our train sets were powered by a 12 volt transformer plugged into the mains as we could afford electricity as we hadn't splashed our cash on Lego ;-)

£169 for a Lego Shuttle....?? I could do it for about 5s and 6d, some old newspapers, a bit of fish glue and some metal coat hangers....Papier Mache rulez :-)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Welcome back

Take a 4-6 year old kid and give them a cardboard box. It instantly, no assembly required, becomes a Formula One racing car, then a Spitfire, then a Space Shuttle, then a submarine, then a house, then a Tardis then whatever else they can imagine.

[Dr. G. Freeman]

Re: Welcome back

Green ?

What luxury-

Mine was red, yellow, blue, black, white and grey- green was just coming in as a colour, for the forest men figures (who were re stickered as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles) as I was growing out of Lego for the first time.

Now, back into Lego again, surprised at the range of colours, but still miss my old sets.

Mine's the one with the Lego spacemen in the pocket.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Welcome back

Back in my day when Abba roamed the Earth and Lego was for children - they didn't make olive green bricks. The reason was allegedly not to have children make army stuff - because Lego was all Scandinavian and hippy

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Welcome back

Don't knock that clockwork motor. My kids have inherited two of mine, still going strong - by contrast the old 3xC cell motor boxes (from, er, 1976 - set 404) are looking a little corroded.

[deadlockvictim]

Lego Friends Death Star

My favourite large-scale Lego spaceship is Steve Price's Lego Friends Death Star [https://www.flickr.com/photos/pricey73/].

I just wish there was a PDF guide to building it.

My girls have enough Friends lego that I could probably build it.

I want to be proud of this technological terror he's constructed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lego Friends Death Star

Oh you beauty. Finally, a Friends Lego project that doesn't make me nauseous - I know what I'm doing with my kids this weekend.

[Gene Cash]

"The Register asked Lego to comment"

"Awright mate, we won't be including any more silver bricks. Scratching issue resolved!"

I would think the scratches are from being in a big bag with other bricks, and being jostled about in shipping. I also notice the finish isn't very regular. Look at that 3rd top brick. No scratches but a hell of a mottled color.

"required Lego VIP points to collect"

Shit's hard enough to find in the first place. This is why I have no Lego models aside from Mars rover Curiosity. I saw one Saturn V model in a store window and "we don't want to sell our display model right now"

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "The Register asked Lego to comment"

British customer service = we can't let you have the spare part because then we wouldn't have any left

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "The Register asked Lego to comment"

"I'm just telling you what I've told the other four people today - we don't stock it 'cos there's no demand!"

[arachnoid2]

Re: "The Register asked Lego to comment"

Lego - building a good reputation.

[awavey]

Re: "The Register asked Lego to comment"

Im not sure as the silver bricks in my set had the exact same scratches, same angle,same size on every brick, its got to be a manufacturing defect,though Im not that fussed about it its not noticeable from a distance arguably it creates a pattern effect since they are so uniformly scractched and you can put it down to weathering from micro meteorites.

[chivo243]

So timely!

We were just discussing getting a Star Wars battle cruiser in the office, but the 1400 credits was a bit over our budget!!

[Blofeld's Cat]

Displaying it ...

Personally I'd go with the "orbiting pet store".

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Displaying it ...

And a lesson about the use of animals in space flight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing there...

Less pointless than a Martian wankcopter.

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Nothing there...

Why the f*ck do you even exist, dude. Seriously, if you're only here to snipe and bring people down, feel free to jog on.

[I should coco]

Scratch-ed?

I thought they were a design feature, not fault. Its only after I read this piece and looked at my model I realised I need new glasses.

I have to say having bought into the whole "proper" space themed Lego - Eagle, Space Station, Saturn-V, I think this is the best set yet. I thoroughly enjoyed building it and the attention to detail of the inner structure made me smile (when I should have been working).

[Bah Humbug]

Every time I see that statement about the Ulysses probe, this bit jumps out to me as a blatant lie: "We do our best to make sure items like this one are available to as many LEGO fans as possible,"

I understand there were just 300 sets available for the whole of Europe. That is not a typo or missing any zeros - three hundred. For the whole of Europe.

That is a long way from making sure items are available to as many fans as possible! If they actually meant that statement, then they'd produce a load more sets.

[Annihilator]

Stickers

Stickers should be banned from all Lego sticks. Print on the bricks or don't.

[Aussie Doc]

Optional catchy title here

Must admit the very active 3D printing community I'm part of seems to oscillate between printing dressing up stuff, erm, sorry, cosplay gear (esp Star Wars, various popular games etc) and various 'not-Lego' bricks (obviously can't call them 'Lego').

Many sites/fora with lists of how many of which block is required for a given project.

Some folks get really into this sort of thing.

Even build big helicopters ------->

[arachnoid2]

Eagle lander

The lander looks good EEV blog did a build with his sone recently