I think the Lego Ideas Saturn V rocket that we released a few years ago really set the bar for the level of detail that we could achieve in our space sets and we wanted to continue that with this shuttle. We were also able to achieve lots of the fun, little details that we would normally leave out. Madge: The thing that really inspired that scale was the Hubble Space Telescope and the STS-31 mission because normally, when we do a space shuttle, the payload bay is kind of, well, I don't want to say an afterthought, but it's often smaller than it should be because of the constraints of working with Lego bricks.īeing able to go up to that scale meant that we could get the walls of the shuttle thin enough so that we could keep the Hubble in an accurate scale to the orbiter. Why did you choose the 1/70th scale? What was it about that particular size? When we had to pick a mission, we jumped straight for STS-31 because it was what informed our childhood understanding of the space shuttle.ĬS: This is the largest space shuttle Lego has released. So I think there was some sort of subconscious inspiration there. I didn't have it, but I remember looking at it in the catalog. And I remember looking at that set as a kid and being totally blown away by it. Madge: Not specifically, as in we we didn't look at anything and say, 'Let's do it like that.' However, having said that, a couple of us that were heavily involved in this project grew up with the Discovery shuttle that Lego released in 2003 (opens in new tab). Did you look back at any of those sets for inspiration or to borrow building techniques for the new space shuttle Discovery? There have been more than a dozen sets that have been modeled after the orbiter, at different scales and level of detail. (Image credit: Lego)ĬS: As many know, this is not the first time Lego has released a space shuttle. The new Lego NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set reproduces the winged orbiter and Hubble Space Telescope in detail. Related: 10 cool facts about space shuttle Discovery There were also technical manuals online that were really fun to look through to find cross sections of the shuttle, the profile of the wings and things like that. With the Hubble, there's a certain configuration of the payload bay to get to the telescope to fit in. Also technical details, like what was placed where on STS-31 in comparison to other missions. So we were able to ask really specific questions and they were able to provide really specific feedback, like which logos, for example, were used on certain missions, whether it should be the NASA 'worm' or the 'meatball,' and things like that. So we were just downloading images of the specific mission and shuttle to help inform our design.īut then we also were working really closely with NASA and some of their technical advisors. The most obvious one is the archive on NASA's website, it's just full of amazing images. CollectSPACE (cS): So you came into this project as fans of the shuttle, but given the level of detail you were able to include, were they any specific references you turned to while designing Discovery?

Space shuttle lego