Tag Archives: Apollo

LEGO Technic H2 2024 | Set Previews

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Our sneaky Elves, returning from successfully sneaking, have found yet more H2 2024 sets for us to reveal. This time it’s the turn of Technic, with no less than four brand new sets to be added to the line up. Each is an officially-licensed real-world vehicle too, which means in this writer’s case he may finally be able to afford a Koenigsegg!

LEGO Technic 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut

And here it is, the 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut. Named after a bottle of vodka and theoretically capable of a top speed of well over 300mph, just 125 Jesko Absoluts will be produced, which means the real deal will be comprehensively out-numbered by its LEGO brother.

Aimed at ages 10+, the new 801-piece set includes a working V8 engine driven by the rear wheels via a differential, ‘hand of god’ steering, and the Jesko’s ‘dihedral synchro-helix door system’. Which basically means they open upwards.

Arriving in August of 2024, expect 42173 to cost around £47 / $50, and for bedroom floors everywhere to become the venue for some serious top speed testing.

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LEGO Technic 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance

From the world’s theoretically fastest car, to LEGO’s actual fastest, this is the brand new Control+ powered 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance.

Also aimed at ages 10+ and with a similar parts count, 42176 claims to be the fastest remote control LEGO set yet. Servo steering and motorised drive are powered by a new on-board rechargeable battery, operated via the Control+ app.

Said app also controls the working LED lights (via some trick new lighting pieces), and provides ‘live data feedback’, so drivers can perfect chasing the cat.

A range of real-world sponsorship decals (gone are the days of sets wearing stickers saying such things as ‘Race’, ‘En-Jin’, ‘Fuel’ and suchlike) enhance a reasonable approximation of the GT4’s shape, and you’ll be able to get your hands on the fastest LEGO set yet for £150 / $170 when it races into stores on August 1st.

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Lego Technic 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV

Some of the Lego Community’s very favourite things to create are lunar rovers, with hundreds of all shapes and sizes uploaded each year. All of them can can trace their existence back to this; the Lunar Rover Vehicle, or ‘LRV’.

Packed inside the Apollo 17 mission, the lunar rover carried scientific equipment and astronauts across the moon’s surface, and now – thanks to the new 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV* set – builders can reimagine this astonishing moment in human history at home.

Constructed from over 1,900 pieces, many of which are accurately coloured in gold and bronze, 42182 can be folded up just like the real thing (or, less exotically, a wheelchair), and features working steering and suspension, brand new tyres, plus tools, some ‘moon rock’, and three separate attachable equipment sets including the wonderfully named ‘Traverse Gravimeter Experiment’.

Which might not sound like much for £190 / $220, but with a black box aimed at ages 18+ and a description using phrases such as ‘a mindful project’, 42182 is targeted very much as a ‘display’ piece, despite its Technic billing. And – as a display piece at least – the 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV* is out of this world.

*Yes LEGO named 42182 twice. But if it’s good enough for Ferrari and Lamborghini…

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But wait, didn’t you say ‘four brand new sets’? We sure did. We’ll be back with the fourth new addition soon, and it’s a goodie…

Apollo 10

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May 18th 1969, and the tenth Apollo mission departed the Kennedy Space Centre to begin its eight day mission. Only the fourth U.S human spaceflight and the second to orbit the moon, the Apollo 10 mission was a rehearsal for the first moon landing that was to come just two months later, when – on July 20th 1969 – mankind’s relationship with our lunar satellite changed forever.

Cue a tenuous link to today’s car, the Apollo Intensa Emozione. No, us neither, but the Intensa Emozione (or ‘IE’ for short) is a carbon-fibre German supercar, “based on airflow and nature… marine animals in particular”, and powered by a naturally-aspirated Ferrari-derived V12.

Just ten Apollo ‘IE’s will be built, each costing almost $2.7 million (around 1% of the inflation-adjusted cost of the Apollo 10 mission), and having literally nothing at all in common with the moon landings beyond being very expensive. Still, it’s a considerably better name than another more well-known Ferrari V12-powered hypercar.

This exceptional brick-built replica of the Apollo ‘IE’ comes from previous bloggee 3D supercarBricks, who has captured the bodywork-inspired-by-marine-animals brilliantly. Opening gull-wing doors, 3D printed wheels, and superb presentation enhance the realism, and there’s more of the model to see 3D’s Apollo Flickr album. Blast-off to the moon via the link above.

Towering Inferno

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This is the NASA ‘Launch Umbilical Tower’, designed to send the world’s most powerful machine – the Saturn V rocket – into space, and carried by the world’s heaviest land vehicle.

LEGO’s enormous 92176 NASA Saturn V set has allowed space fans to conduct their own bedroom-based lunar missions, but the ‘blast-off’ bit (in this writer’s opinion, the coolest bit) requires a few additional accessories not supplied by LEGO…

Fortunately Janotechnic of Eurobricks – here making his TLCB debut – has the answer, not only building this incredible 1:110 scale Technic Nasa Crawler and Launch Umbilical Tower, but doing so from three official LEGO Technic sets; the 42055 Bucket Wheel Excavator, the 42082 Rough Terrain Crane, and the 42098 Car Transporter.

That expansive parts supply has enabled Jano to equip his B-B-B-Model with a huge array of motorised functions, including drive and steering, crane rotation, retractable support swing-arms, and even a working lift within the tower!

It’s an incredible creation and one that (in simplified form below) you can build for yourself, as building instructions are available. There’s more of Jano’s amazing NASA Crawler and Tower to see – including a video of the model’s motorised and mechanical functions – at the Eurobricks forum. Click the link above and prepare to blast-off!

Fly Me to the Moon

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Lego Apollo Supercar

Built for TLCB Summer Building Competition, Flickr’s Davanchi M. has entered his own fictional ‘Apollo’ supercar. Nice detailing abounds and you can see more at the link above.

One Small Step for Mini-Figure

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Lego Apollo Luna Rover

This beautiful shot comes from one of Flickr’s finest mini-figure scale builders, the brilliant _Tiler. We’ve featured _Tiler’s work here numerous times, and it’s normally of the loud and fast variety. His latest creation though, is pretty quiet and very very slow. And yet somehow possibly the coolest model he’s built to date, the awesome Apollo Luna Rover.

His latest build has also had the added bonus of turning the Elves into astronauts for the day. This means that although there are no boxes of any kind left in the office as they’ve all been appropriated for use as space helmets, it’s beautifully peaceful – as the Elves are silently and slowly moonwalking everywhere. A big whole-hearted ‘thank you’ to _Tiler from the everyone at TLCB Towers, and if you want to see more of his Apollo Lunar Rover you can do so via the handy link above.

Featured TFOL: Alexander Paschoaletto

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Lego Gumpert Apollo and SSC AeroApologies for the blogging hiatus over the past few days; some of our Elves went missing at roughly the same time as TLCB became embroiled in a legal dispute. We’re not suggesting the two occurrences are linked of course, but if anyone’s going to lock the Elves in a dark room it’s going to be us. Anyway, back to something we’ve not done for a while; a long overdue ‘Featured Teenage Fan Of Lego’ (TFOL).

Our Featured TFOL category is not about blogging the absolute best creations found, rather it allows us to recognise, and publicise, younger builders’ achievements. Alexander Paschoaletto earns the accolade this time round, with a string of solid automotive efforts, culminating in the superb Gumpert Apollo and SSC Aero shown above. You can check out these, and the rest of Alexander’s creations, on MOCpages.