My digital entry to the space competition, I present the LRV Kynes.
I've toyed with the idea of building a big spaceship for some time, but when the competition started I found inspiration very hard to come by. Eventually I decided to try and build a spaceship using as many as possible of the parts in my collection that I can see very little potential use for - parts that don't really suit city or Technic builds. I started with the engines, using two of Rock Raiders part
30296px1 and from then on the design process went pretty quickly! Admittedly the ship did end up using a lot more "useful" parts than "useless" parts, including plenty that would require some Bricklink investment if I ever get around to building this in real life.
Keen-eyed Rock Raiders fans will also notice three of part
30303 used for the landing struts, shown here retracted into the bottom of the ship.
Another view of the back of the ship, here with the landing struts extended.
The ship needed a purpose, so early on I decided to make it a ship of exploration/scientific research. Passenger transport seemed too boring, and military and cargo spaceship MOCs are ten-a-penny around the web. I suppose it's also time I came out as a little bit of a Trekkie, so a peaceful mission of exploration suits my spaceship ethos :)
The ship is built in sections which can be separated, with most sections also having removable roofs to see inside:
The cockpit.
This section is just a corridor internally, but externally houses a rover on the starboard side and a small probe on the port side.
A cutaway of the astrometrics lab.
A cutaway of the chemical/sample analysis lab.
A cutaway of the crew quarters. The ship is designed to be manned by a crew of 2, working in shifts so only one bed is required. And unfortunately, the only toilet is just behind a curtain. Space exploration and research isn't luxurious!
The air lock - the only section without a removable roof (unless you count the engines themselves, which aren't really accessible to the crew). Those double glass sliding doors are also found on the two lab sections, but I removed them from the cutaway images to be able to see the detail inside.
A cutaway of the engine room, with a hatch for emergency access into the engines themselves.
I've never done
greebling before (cool to see that a Lego spaceship is the second image on the wikipedia page for Greeble!), but I had a go at a few small sections, mainly on top of the air lock and crew quarters. I think greebling would be easier to do in real bricks than digitally - finding those hard-to-name parts that everyone has but nobody knows what to do with is tricky in stud.io but just sifting through a box of unsorted Lego would find loads of them and in greater variety than I have in this model!
Naming the ship was tricky. LRV just stands for Lego Research Vessel. I toyed with a few name ideas, looking for a suitable scientist or explorer:
Stanley - after the explorer Henry Morton Stanley probably most famous for the words he may or may not have actually said: "Dr Livingstone, I presume". Someone in my family claimed that we were distantly related to him a few years ago. His wikipedia page begins promisingly, as a strong opponent of the slave trade and a person who held other races in high regard which was unusual for his time... but the "Controversies" section shows him in a very different light so I ruled him out.
Parsons - after William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse, and his son Charles Parsons. William was Ireland's most famous astronomer, who built the Leviathan telescope at Birr Castle. Charles invented the compound steam turbine and gives his name to the building where I studied mechanical engineering in Trinity. But as Earls of Parsonstown (Birr) I felt they had a bit too much of a colonial air about them so I ruled that name out too.
The name Kynes comes from the novel Dune and suits this project nicely. The Kynes family are researchers and, without giving any spoilers away, are working to make efficient use of resources, like my own goal of using up parts I thought I had no use for!
Topic: Spaceship! (Read 9762 times)