Technabob » spaceship

LEGO Starcraft Battlecruiser: Bricks of Liberty

Conner Flynn — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:00:10 +0000

Holy crap! I can not stop staring at this amazing LEGO ship built by Sven Junga. Starcraft fans will recognize it as the Terran Battlecruiser called the Hyperion (Jim Raynor’s flagship from Starcraft 2.)

The detail blows me away. Sven does amazing brick-work. He used artwork from the game to get all of those details just right, which must have taken a good while. Can you guess how many pieces he used?

This impressive creation has over 15,000 pieces. If LEGO would only release kits this exciting, I would be building them. Of course a kit like this would cost a fortune, so there goes that idea. Sven has the right idea, build it yourself.

For more images of this one as well as other creations check out Sven Junga’s Flickr page.

[via Neatorama via Kotaku]

Giant 54-Pound LEGO Battlestar Galactica Spaceship Taunts Cylons

Shane McGlaun — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:00:48 +0000

I was a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica both when the original series aired when I was a kid and when the new series was on Syfy. I was pissed both times the show was cancelled. Another geek out there named Gary King loves the show too, and his favorite thing to build from LEGO is giant recreations of the ships from the old and new series. His latest creation is called Battlestar Berzerk.

Personally, I don’t recall this ship, but apparently, it was only seen for a short time in the first episode of the new show, right before meeting its demise. The ship is very detailed and King says it was his most difficult project yet. It took two months and the finished model is approximately 73 inches long x 24″ inches wide x 14″ inches high and weighs in at a hefty 54 pounds.

The ship is so large and heavy that it requires internal supports made from wood and steel – and that 54-pound weight doesn’t include the support structure. The support was required after parts started to bend and shear off the craft.

King detailed the project on Mocpages along with many more photos. This is one awesome LEGO project!

[via Brothers-Brick]

LEGO Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer Executor Landing This Fall

Range — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:50:26 +0000

Yesterday, a reader pointed out that the LEGO Death Star I mentioned had been available for a while. That was true, but it was pretty hard to find. Nevertheless, LEGO is planning on releasing Darth Vader’s super star destroyer Executor this September. The Executor was definitely my favorite star destroyer in the original trilogy. I loved the music that went along with it as Darth Vader oversaw his command.

LEGO and Star Wars fans will rejoice when this will be released in a few months. The Executor will measure 50 inches in length – making it the longest LEGO kit you can buy – and will be made up of 3,152 LEGO bricks. The ship will weigh 8 lbs, and features a removable command bridge that will fit a LEGO Darth Vader and a few other minifigs.

Just like the LEGO Death Star, expect to pay $400 (USD) for this baby. At over 4-feet in length, this is going to be a huge build, which should be fun for LEGO and Star Wars fans. LEGO minifigs included in this kit are Darth Vader, IG-88, Bossk and more.

[CNet via Ubergizmo]

Millennium Falcon Blueprints: Maybe You Can Build Your Own Now

Range — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:32:11 +0000

Are you total Star Wars fan? Well, then this should be right up your alley. Here are some detailed blueprints of the Millennium Falcon, and it does show that Han Solo skimped on some details in order to make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Han Solo won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, so maybe he’s to blame for the fact that there are only five oxygen masks and four vacuum suits. Needless to say that the ship was built for speed, not safety. This means that in the case of an emergency, they probably left Chewie behind. Wookiees do require oxygen, don’t they?

Naturally, a lot of space was dedicated to making the ship fast and good for moving illicit goods through the universe. . What’s missing? A lot of comforts that you’d find on any ship this size. Although there is an area designated as the ‘grill’, but for some reason I doubt that they were cooking up burgers and steaks.

Check out the detailed blueprint here.

[Furious Fanboys via DVice]

Sci-Fi Airshow: the Most Awesome Fake Exhibit You’Ll Ever See

Lambert Varias — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:42:55 +0000

Bill George has been in love with spaceships and other sci-fi props ever since he was a little boy. Now he’s a Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, but even his job is not enough to satisfy his craving for fictional spaceships. So he put up the Sci-Fi Airshow, a place where everyone can see – and sometimes ride – old but beautiful spaceships, like the proto-space shuttle Orion, the flying sub aka the Stingray, and the eccentric Spindrift. By the way, none of those ships actually exist.

But who says we can’t have galleries and exhibits filled with non-existent spaceships? Armed with his imagination, his camera and the magical Photoshop, George depicted scenes of the fictional location of the Sci-Fi Airshow, filled with people and of course the spaceships. Here’s a sampling of slides from the Sci-Fi Airshow’s guided tour:

But the ultimate proof of George’s nerdery is that he actually writes a page’s worth of fake histories for each of the spaceships in the Sci-Fi Airshow, even making up mock-posters or pictures of crash sites to support the text. So let’s visit the Sci-Fi Airshow! Admission is free. Touching the spaceships is prohibited, not to mention impossible.

[via Retro Thing]

Love the New Doctor? Get a Tardis Cookie Jar!

Range — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:24:20 +0000

If you’re like me, you’ve already started watching the new season of Doctor Who on BBC with the new Doctor, played by Matt Smith. But if you can’t get enough of the Doctor, you might want to grab this TARDIS-themed cookie jar.

For those of you not in the know, TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension In Space, and it’s the Doctor’s spaceship that he uses to travel through space and time. What’s really neat is that it’s a lot bigger inside than it is outside. Plus, it’s been stuck in the shape of a police box for about 30 seasons or so. And now, it serves cookies. Delicious chocolate chip cookies. Just don’t let the Daleks exterminate them before you can eat them.

It’s available at Thinkgeek for $27 (USD).

[via DVice]

Rcx 4 Star Stryker Looks Nothing Like an X-Wing Fighter

Technabob — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:47:26 +0000

I was strolling down the aisles at the CES show today, when what did I see but a wondrous remote-controlled aircraft hovering in the sky. What was it that I spied?

Nope, as much as I want to believe this airborne beauty is an X-Wing Fighter, it’s actually an RCX 4 Star Stryker, I swear.

Whatever you call it, it’s a whole lot of awesome. The RCX 4 uses 3D gyroscopic technology to hover in a perfectly-balanced way – perfect for beginner R/C flyers. Not only can it be controlled from up to 1-mile away, it can fly for about 10 minutes on a single charge. Watch it fly through the air with the greatest of ease, doing its best to avoid Lucasfilm attorneys at every turn…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And the best part is, it comes in this nifty padded metal case, along with the controller.

The whole kit-and-kaboodle retails for $399 (USD) over at DigitTronics, but if you happen to be hanging out in the South Hall at CES this week, you can grab one for a show special price of $299.

LEGO Star Wars Rebel Frigate is Frakkin’ Huge

Range — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:08:00 +0000

This LEGO replica of a rebel frigate from Star Wars is an impressive 4 -feet, 6-inches long. I don’t know exactly how long it took or how many LEGO bricks were used, but it sure looks amazing.

Star Wars fans may remember the Redemption, a classic EF76 Nebulon-B class rebel frigate featured in The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. It was a medical frigate of the Rebel fleet.

This LEGO replica comes courtesy of Steef de Prouw. His model is big enough to dock the Millennium Falcon, as well as three X-Wing fighters. The frigate measures 172 studs in length. Prouw says that he had to spend days thinking about ways of handling each little part of the build.

I really like this project. I always wanted to get the full-sized ships as toys, but never really got any when I was a kid. I can remember someone having a bunch of ships and that always astounded me.

[via Gizmodo]

Utah School Selling Its Old Spaceship Simulator. Wait, Schools have Spaceship Simulators Now?

Lambert Varias — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:55:38 +0000

You lucky Alpine School District students and your Space Education Center with its spaceship simulators. I hate you. All I had when I was a kid were teachers who liked to gossip and humiliate students who didn’t go to church. I hope you never find a buyer for your fancy schmancy USS Galileo, which has “stations, networking, speakers, a main viewscreen, and anything a futuristic starship should have” built in. The auction itself doesn’t say that it’s supposed to be a replica of the Star Trek USS Galileo, but it is it’s quite a ways off from the design of the real deal. And I hate it.

Eh, who am I kidding. The auction still has 19 and a half days to go and the current bid is already at $3,200 (USD). I’m pretty sure the simulator cost way more than that though. Here’s a few more pics of this stupid simulator. I wish we had one at our school. But we didn’t so I hate it.

Rich nerds and awesome schools, go to Public Surplus and bid on this baby. You don’t want your child, or your students, or yourself to not have a spaceship simulator. Trust me, the pain never goes away. Damn you awesome schools and your awesome amenities! Damn you all!

[Via UberReview via Born Rich]

Rickey Taylor: Daydreamer, Genius, or Does He Just have Too Much Free Time?

Lambert Varias — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:20:09 +0000

Here’s an interesting blog I fished out of Dark Roasted Blend‘s Link Latte: Rickey Taylor’s Sharpened Pencil, where said Mr. Taylor, a CADD designer/drafter, posts his doodles about his ideas for inventions. So is he a modern day Da Vinci, a source of inspiration, or just a dude with a surplus of paper, pencils and time? To help you decide let’s look at some of his ideas. Below is his sketch for what he calls a “POD” (I don’t know why he types it that way, but it’s his idea so double quotes all caps it is), which is basically a personal spaceship and spacesuit.

Rickey argues, “Instead of constructing a vehicle and making it an environmental envelope for the astronauts, we make individual environmental “PODS” for each astronaut and create a lifting system to deliver the “PODS” to an orbital ship or the space station. It is far easier to create a hardened egg-like environment (as opposed to a ship) which meets vehicle lifting capabilities. This concept has greater viable surviveability [sic] in case of catastrophic failure than what we have now.” I cannot comment on that because I don’t know anything about what he’s talking about. All I know is that if I’m going to space I’d rather be in a shuttle with a bunch of people rather than be alone in a “POD”. Sad face.

Here’s a much simpler concept: Tail lights that blink faster the harder you brake. Unfortunately for Taylor, a commenter says that BMW and Mercedes Benz already thought of this. But what’s even sadder is that according to the same commenter, the technology is illegal in Finland. What? Do the lights cause seizures or something?

Here’s my favorite Rickey Taylor idea: the “Wrist Rescue”. I saw a similar device in Gundam 00, except that the wire in the anime is used by the Meisters to get on and off of their Gundams in a cool and dramatic manner, fast enough to eliminate long awkward goodbyes yet slow enough for the people to take pictures of the pilot. Like most good inventions, the Wrist Rescue is very simple yet sensible. It’s a fire-resistant cable with a wrist strap at one end. The cable is wound up in a fire hose like roll, so all you have to do to get out of a building is to put on the strap and jump out of a window. The cable lowers you to the ground (at a safe speed of course), at which point the cable retracts, ready for the next evacuee. So it’s kind of like a reverse grappling hook. Of course it doesn’t eliminate our tendency to panic and bum rush everyone so we can be the first to escape. But overall it’s a neat concept.

So, you think ol’ Rickey has a sound noggin? Or are your ideas a thousand times better? Check out Rickey’s blog for more of his doodles. Also, he seems to be obsessed with glass. Storefront glass.

Trekkie Porn: Customized Starship Enterprise Replicas

Lambert Varias — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:30:52 +0000

30 versions of the USS Enterprise are being distributed to cinemas across the United States to promote the upcoming Star Trek movie. Each 34-in replica was cast from the same 3D model made for the movie by Industrial Light & Magic. The replicas were made by various artists, including Gizmodo‘s Senior Editor Jesus Diaz. Here’s his take on the iconic vessel:

It’s nice, but personally I don’t like how it looks too much like a toy. That’s just me though. The sculptor and illustrator Rafael Burgos opted for a scarier replica:

Wouldn’t want to be on that ship. The collective design team H5 chose a yummy approach for their Enterprise replica:

Cookie Monster will instantly become a Trekkie once he sees that. You can view the other Enterprise replicas along with some info on their creators on the movie’s official website.

[via Gizmodo]

Papercraft Millennium Falcon Might Ignite at Lightspeed

Lambert Varias — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:36:11 +0000

Bored, young Padawan? Here’s a project for you: build your own papercraft Millennium Falcon.

Don’t be intimidated; Jedi Papercraft Master Shunichi Makino has already done half of the work for you: he has the smuggler’s starship’s patterns and step-by-step instructions up on his website. And yes, the Force. It’s with you.

Unlike the Millennium Falcon sled, you can’t ride this one, but you can still have fun with it. After finishing your very own papercraft Millennium Falcon, why don’t you welcome the New Year with it: tie it to a couple of firecracker rockets and watch it fly. It’s going to be wrecked, sure, but you can always make another one. Theoretically anyway. Me? I don’t even have the patience (or the printer) to print the patterns.

[via GearCrave]