Flights to Mars, real and LEGOby Dwayne A. Day Tuesday, July 6, 2021
In 1968, Boeing produced a detailed study of a human mission to Mars. Now somebody has produced the spacecraft using LEGO. Here it is in two different scales. (credit: Joe Chambers)In early 1968, The Boeing Company delivered to NASA a thick, multi-volume report on how to send humans to Mars. That report, titled “Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft Concept Definition,” described a large, nuclear-powered spacecraft that would be launched in components atop Saturn V rockets, and after assembly in orbit would head off to the Red Planet. Boeing’s Mars spacecraft design concept was further refined by NASA in 1969 and would become iconic for the next decade and a half, appearing in artwork and on book covers and in the pages of novels until it was replaced by another concept for a human mission to Mars that resulted from the Case For Mars conference and was often referred to as the “Mars Cycler.” That Mars spaceship design entered the zeitgeist for another decade or so. But Boeing’s design has shown remarkable staying power and still appears in artwork decades later. Now, Boeing’s design has been recreated in LEGO form, in three-dimensional plastic glory that you can build yourself.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4208/1