Thread by @jakekorab

Father-son quality time.

Now I'm going to do an epic Space Shuttle Lego build, inspired by @markawest's Millenium Falcon a while back.

2354 pieces. LFG!

Assembly manual is 318 pages long!

I'm super excited about this. My mum and sister bought it for my birthday. For a kid that are up everything space and particularly shuttle related, this is amazing. Personal highlight was seeing Atlantis in real life at Cape Canaveral before the pandemic.

Stage 1 - The Hubble Space Telescope, 3 bags.

Bag 1 - The stand for the Hubble Space Telescope. I'm amazed at the engineering that Lego put into this to support one particular angle.

Looking at this as an adult I'm amazed at the implied complexity of the industrial process that brought all of these perfectly engineered pieces together into one specific plastic bag.

Bag 2 is the body of the Hubble. It's made up of 3 sub-bags. So many pieces.

The cool thing here is how Lego have colour coded these interior pieces. They won't be visible once the build is complete, but you'd be lost trying to find the right piece otherwise.

There's some really unusual pieces in this set. This one's an L-bend on a socket.

Four of these are used in a 45 degree pivoted combination to attach a circular plate. Clever!

More unusual pieces - flat plates with male connectors underneath and some lightsaber-y posts and cilinders.

And we have the body of a space telescope! 🛰️🔭

That's enough for today. 2/17 bags completed!

And we're back! On to bag 3/17

Lots of small fiddly pieces in this one

2 hours later, the Hubble Space Telescope is done!

3 bags of Lego. 6 hours. The next part is the Space Shuttle - 14 bags! My little helper and I will finish around Christmas 🎄

Welcome back for bag 4/17. This weekend we're building the stand for the Space Shuttle. Bag in a bag. Looking at the final result it's hard to believe it's made up of all these tiny pieces.

Some of the more unusual pieces. The toothy one is a support beam. Again blown away by not just the precision at scale but by the application of engineering principles in a model of this size.

And after 2 hours we're done! This little stand not only pokes out on an angle but is rock solid and bears a considerable amount of weight. So it should, given the Shuttle will be over 50cm in length.

It's the weekend so it's Lego time again! Bag 5/17 and we're starting on the Space Shuttle proper! Wings and undercarriage.

My co-pilot is appropriately themed.

Loads of interesting pieces to construct the landing gear. Solid as a rock once assembled. Hats off to Lego's design engineers.

As usual, lots of non-typical blocks here. All with a structural function.

Looking forward to seeing how the shock absorbers integrate later on in the build.

An hour an a bit later, we're done! You can see the beginnings of a pivoting mechanism.

The undercarriage drops down when raised, but not connected to anything yet. Pegs prepared for connecting the front half of the shuttle. I'm impressed how solid the construction is given the number of small pieces.

After 3 weeks welcome back to bag 6/17. My co-pilot and I are working on the front part of the undercarriage.

More non-standard pieces in this part of the build. Particular interesting is the vent-like block that goes in the nose section. Looking forward to seeing the logic behind it.

Making the connection between the front and back sections. Combination of pegs and long overlays used here.

The result is impressively strong under strain and torsion. The black non-standard L-blocks make a lot more sense now in context. Engineering in the small!

Final result looking good! Had to do my first bit of debugging around the nose section, but ready to go for the next stage!

The underside looks implausibly flat for a Lego build that's so strong.

How strong? This strong.

Arm for length comparison. Seriously impressive.

Welcome back to the Lego Shuttle mega-thread! We're onto bag 7/17! Three sub-bags in this one - going to be working on the body and wings today.

Straight out of the gates we've got an unusual hinge piece, and immediately we fix it into place so it won't pivot. #headScratch

In context, at the front of what looks like the shuttle's leading edge, it provides a flat protrusion. A couple of pivoting pieces at the back. They're sandwiched into place.

Clipping the edge onto the shuttle, you can see why these pieces are necessary - there's no other way to fix stuff at that angle. The protrusion sits on top of a flat panel, preventing downward motion. Clever!

Attached view.

Build a mirror section, and starting to look good!

Those protrusions get fixed into place, as do the pivots. Now we're solidly fixed. Again I'm left marveling at the ingenuity of the @Lego designers.

A couple of small blocks end up going upside down to fill a small right-angled gap in the wing.

A highly specific angled piece gets sandwiched into the center of a wing's leading edge. Attaches perfectly. Genius.

Put together its mirror section, attach it and my 5yo copilot and I are 100 build steps in! 🎉

Click in some flat panels and some small curve units and this bag is done!

Next stage is going to be the front landing gear, bulking up the body, and the rear section that protects the engines.

If you're on a Zoom call with me, you'll see the work in progress on my bookshelf. Also some cow pics.🐮

@threadreaderapp unroll please

@threadreaderapp Unroll please