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Subject: 
Re: Rollout of the New Space Shuttle Intrepid
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.space, lugnet.build
Date: 
Sat, 13 Jan 2001 16:48:40 GMT
Viewed: 
41 times
  
Joel Jacobsen wrote:

*jaw drops* Crimminy Jickets, man! How many wing plates and plates in
general did you USE on that thing?! I don't even want to think of how heavy
must be!

Yes, it is heavy, but probably not as heavy as you may think. Maybe ten
pounds?

The wings are generally 4 plates thick at the leading edge and become
thicker inboard as the approach the fuselage and landing gear wells. I
used 90 wing elements (4x4 and 4x8) to build the leading edges of the
wings and elevons. At one point I thought I had a serious problem. I was
using my dingy 4x8 wings from my old childhood collection to do a layout
study and they would not stack because one stud interferes with the
lower edge lip of the next wing. Houston we have a problem. I already
had a large quantity of these wings on order. When my brand new wings
arrived, I noticed that the Lego Group had made an important improvement
sometime within the past twenty years - they molded a small indentation
in the edge lip, allowing the wings to stack properly. Whew! That really
saved me.

The wings are not solid, but have a crude system of stiffeners
underneath made of lego bricks and plates. This provided the basic
support structure. I then tiled over the upper and lower sides with
black and white plates. They are incredibly stiff. I can't discern
any visible sag, despite their weight. In fact the best way to
lift up the orbiter is by picking it up by the wings.

Any guesses on the piece count on so far?

I started building in October (my AFOL start) with nine 1000 piece bulk
buckets I bought for $9.99 apiece at Meijer (they had a month long sale
so I bought one or two every week when I went grocery shopping) I used
most of the white 2x4, 2x3, and yellow 2x4s from these as well as
portions of the other black and white bricks. I know I ordered at
least 500 2x4 & 200 2x8 black and white plates from Lego Shop At Home,
plus some tiles and 1x6s. I used most of those. My Brickbay Excel sheet
shows I ordered about 2600 pieces total of which probably only about 50%
actually ended up on the orbiter. I also ordered several hundred pieces
from Sanburn Systems.

My guess is somewhere between 3000-4000 pieces in the model.

So.... when're you gonna start on the External Tank, Solid Rocket Booters
and the scale gantry and crawler pad? ^_^

I am starting to think that maybe I could do the tank and boosters if I
can find some good deals on bulk white bricks. It would be a great
engineering project to figure how to mount the orbiter to the stack.
The pad and crawler are way out of my budget!

--
J. Spencer Rezkalla



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Rollout of the New Space Shuttle Intrepid
 
(...) general did you USE on that thing?! I don't even want to think of how heavy must be! This set of pictures makes your work even more impressive; I know how hard black is to photograph and get the detail to come out. Any guesses on the piece (...) (24 years ago, 12-Jan-01, to lugnet.space, lugnet.build)

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