Bill Ward’s Brickpile

There’s a very interesting Interview on BoingBoing with Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer.

I grew up on some of these sets! I started collecting Space LEGO sets in the late 1970′s when I was a little kid, and spent most of my spare time building and rebuilding classic LEGO spaceships and bases.

This was built for the Ice Planet 2002 Contest on Lugnet. I didn’t win, but I thought it captured the essence of the LEGO Ice Planet 2002 theme.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

On my old site, these were four separate entries, but in reposting them I have combined them into one.

In August 2001, Paul Hartzog announced he was sponsoring a “HoverThing” contest. The Contest announcement and rules were posted on LUGNET and many people submitted entries, including myself. I didn’t win, but here are the models I built for the contest. The official contest website shows all the entries, including the winning one. Pocket Rocket Shown in both blue and black versions. Hover Patrol A simple police cruiser Astro-Pumpkin A very silly entry for the contest. The main point was to employ an unusual color scheme and to find a use for the angled part in the nose. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Another repost.

A fighter spacecraft. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Here’s another old post from my old site.

This scout craft visits asteroids and takes samples for analysis, so that if it should prove suitable, mining craft can come and extract minerals from them. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

More reposting of old entries from bill.wards.net:

These little guys are miniature robots or mecha, made as an experiment in getting new uses from some rather specialized parts. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

My newest Space creation is the Lunar Mobile Lounge which has actually been at several BayLUG meetings, even though I never posted about it here.

The concept is based on the “mobile lounges” at Dulles (Washington, D.C.) International Airport, which ferry passengers from one terminal to another. However in this case, they ferry people to their waiting spacecraft which landed nearby. Since most spacecraft that people build out of LEGO don’t have wheels, it would be hard for them to dock to the moonbase – it would require some very high-precision flying to land right at a moonbase connector! Therefore I felt there was a need to be able to carry people to and from spacecraft.

Since the spacecraft might have doors that vary in height, I used a scissor lift mechanism to allow this vehicle to raise and lower the passenger compartment – something the Dulles lounges also can do – to match whatever height is needed. You might remember I asked back in March about ways to do this – I ended up using a worm gear to drive, through a short geartrain, a spool that would wind up a string that was attached to the moving leg of the scissor lift.

The vehicle is equipped with an airlock which includes the moonbase connector. The airlock has two doors to the outside – the moonbase connector and a door with stairs leading to the ground (when the vehicle is lowered all the way, that is). There is one interior door, a sliding door which connects the passenger area with the airlock. On the roof you can see the plumbing for the airlock mechanism – hoses and compressors and a big tank for air which are used to alternately drain and fill the air in the airlock and passenger areas. On the underside of the roof are the vents for taking air in and out of these areas.

Click the photo above to see more, or click to look on Flickr (slideshow) or on Brickshelf (pending moderation).

Technorati Tags: lego, space, moonbase

At long last, here is the blog entry about my micro moonbase monorail. Last January, I got together with other members of BayLUG to install a “microscale space” display at the Valley Fair Mall LEGO store. I posted pictures and a description of that on my blog back then, but I always meant to post details about my model that was featured in the display. So here they are, eight months later – sorry!

Here we see two buildings connected by a monorail. At the right is a sort of office building which has an opening for the monorail to enter the building, inspired by the way they do at Disneyland (or is it WDW) where the monorail goes into the hotel (or at least, I think it did when I was a kid – does it still?). At the other end is a standalone station with a micro moonbase connection. In both cases, the monorail fits into the building closely enough that you can imagine it is an airtight connection (something that matters a lot on an airless moon…).

For the track I am using the straight 16-stud long track of the type originally produced for the 4.5V and 12V trains from long ago, but which has lately been available at the LEGO store Pick-A-Brick (in New Grey, natch). I designed a monorail car that fits nicely on the track. The only problem with the design is it would never be able to take any turns, so it’s a good thing I only have straight track of that type! :-)

Click the photo above to see more, or click to look on Flickr (slideshow) or on Brickshelf (pending moderation).