You're Never Too Old For Legos. Saturn V.

Bratwurst7s

In The Frying Pan
Subscriber
For my 61st birthday my kids got me a Lego Saturn V set. Talk about a surprise! This is going to be fun.

1969 pieces and 1 meter tall.

But before I could even get started I wanted a dust free place to put it. After a bit of looking around I found a nice but simple wood (kinda) and glass display case. It finally arrived yesterday and got built and hung just now.

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Cheers,
James
 
Now that that is taken care of I can start to think about building a rocket. :)

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OK. 14+yo. Check. Squeeking by on that one.
Small piece choking hazard? Check. I'll have to be careful that nothing falls in my beer.
Beer? Check.

Ready to get started.
James
 
Awesome, both my girls had Legos (Dad helped lots with them) and love anything from my childhood-era space program.
 
Yeah, I spent a lot of fun time with my kids building Lego stuff. My son still has all of it, tubs full of them. He still collects the larger Star Wars sets and he's 29 now. I thought that it was awesome that they thought to get me this. Now my audio workbench has to share space for a spaceship.

Cheers,
James
 
The parts are sorted into 12 numbered bags, presumably in the order of assembly.

The instruction book has a whopping 182 pages.

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I'm starting to think that this may take more than 1 case of beer before this is finished.

I think that I'll go turn on the main system and listen to Dark Side Of The Moon while browsing through the instructions...

Cheers,
James
 
What a neat and thoughtful gift!

Yes, it was a really cool surprise. I have 3 kids, all long grown now, and they have given me some really great gifts over the years. Christmas was a nice 16" globe. I had always wanted one but never got around to buying one. Nothing puts world news and history in perspective like a globe but a good quality 16" one is actually a bit hard to find.

And then there are the tools. A 80w Ersa soldering station that I really love and gets almost daily use. The Black & Decker 18v cordless hammerdrill and orbital sander. I know that a lot of people knock B&D tools but I've used them all my life and have never had anything but good service from them. The 18v drill is compact, well balanced and seems to run half of forever on a charge. I like it a lot.

Anyway. The Saturn V stages are built up from a complex and sturdy central load bearing column supporting the outer shell. After opening bag #1 I found that the small pieces are supplied in a seperate bag. After sorting things out it's time to begin.

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Cheers,
James
 
The first section...

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Note that so far there are no caps, resistors or diodes to check or idle current to set, but if that comes up I'm ready...

Cheers,
James
 
After a good lunch and a nap I felt ready to continue with the lower core section.

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Cheers,
James
 
And then the final steps to finish the first core section...

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...and there it is. The lower core section of the 1st stage finished, 24 steps and 10 pages of the instructions. To build the entire first stage of the rocket will take 136 steps and 73 pages of instructions.

In the Air Force the maintenance manual and instruction books for our airplanes were called "Technical Orders", TO (tee-oh) for short. So from here on we will be referring to the TO. OK?

That's all for today. You don't want to rush these things. Gotta savor the fun.

Cheers,
James
 
I see the Lego “tool” has been optimized.
I don’t remember the pin on my kids old one. It was shorter too.
 
A TO is a lawful order...

That is correct. That is exactly why it is called a Technical ORDER.
We WILL be building this one according to the TO. Or we will be standing tall before the Wife Commander.

Today marks the finish of the 1st stage central core and the 1st section of the TO.

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Cheers,
James
 
Now we have a serious problem here.

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You see them? That's just like installing all 4 main landing gear struts in a C-130 and finding 2 extra jackscrew thrust washers left over. That is not allowed by the TO. Safety of Flight issue.

Now I know that I counted 5 each of those white and brown spacers before starting. They are right there in the photo. And I know that the TO called for 4 each white ones in step 4 and 4 each brown ones in step 25, I can see them, they are installed and torqued to spec and correctly safety wired. And I have rechecked the TO 3 times and there are just no steps that call for those 2 extra parts.

This is just not a good way to start such a project. Good thing that the Wife Commander is out shopping. I still have time to figure this one out.

Cheers,
James
 
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go check out the lego store in NYC by rock center. there are lego kits in there costing many hundreds up to thousands, including a 'fully functional death star' (say that in a creepy evil voice)
 
go check out the lego store in NYC by rock center. there are lego kits in there costing many hundreds up to thousands, including a 'fully functional death star' (say that in a creepy evil voice)

Well, it would be a bit of a long drive from here. ;)

I kinda let my kids know that there might be a Saturn V gantry kit soon...
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/a88109ec-9970-4fe1-98b4-9bd535856ab4

...'cause hopefully I'll be having more birthdays in the future. :)

Cheers,
James
 
So section 2 is pretty simple and straightforward. Build up 4x lower side panels, each made up of a lower and upper section. Then mount them.

First the lower panel sections...

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Cheers,
James
 
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