![]() ![]() 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. 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. 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.ĬS: As many know, this is not the first time LEGO has released a space shuttle. 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. ![]() This interview has been edited for length and clarity.ĬollectSPACE (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? "From the very start point, it was just people being passionate for it and having fun making a space shuttle," he said.ĬollectSPACE spoke with Madge about creating the new LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set, his favorite parts and any hidden details space shuttle fans should look out for while building the 2,354-piece model. And that is just one of the many details packed into the almost 2-foot-long (0.5 m) model.īut it was never just a task that Madge and his colleagues were assigned to do it was a project they wanted to see done right. One of the first challenges that Madge took on was how to build in a mechanism to deploy the shuttle's landing gear without impinging on size of the payload bay that needed to hold the set's included model of the Hubble Space Telescope. To be sure, there was a lot of work to be done between the initial idea and the final product. "It started more as us just sparring and talking about how cool a LEGO space shuttle in that scale would be, and then it was people saying, 'Oh, what if we used that element for the engines? What if we used this element for the cockpit?' And all those things came together until someone built a concept model," Madge told collectSPACE in an interview. It was years before the toy company decided to produce the new NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set - released for sale at LEGO Stores and on on Thursday (April 1) - that Madge and some of his fellow LEGO designers began bandying about the idea for a large-scale, toy brick version of the winged orbiter. No one at LEGO told Milan Madge to begin creating a detailed model of the space shuttle.
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