I made a solar system out of Lego!
This post will be a little more detailed. You can see a nice summary album of the process on Imgur: http://imgur.com/a/KqjZK
 |
| The final results |
I got my inspiration from a mosaic displayed at the European Space Agency in Germany (http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/04/Pacman_Solar_System). It was made by the artist Invader (http://www.space-invaders.com) . I borrowed heavily from his design and made some changes along the way.
I liked the 8-bit look of the tiles and had been thinking about starting a project using Lego, so it made a lot of sense.
Design
I started by making some mock-ups on paper of each planet. I originally thought I would use 4 Lego plates for each tile, but I quickly realized that would make it too large. I switched to using just one 1x1 plate per box.
Building & Learning
We tested our plans on one planet - Earth. I'm always on the lookout for things for my kids to do. It's more important to be fun than a success. Fun means they might try it again.
I started out by getting a standard plate from Lego, which only came in 2 colors: tan and green. I thought I would just cover everything outside of the planets in black pieces. This idea was quickly dropped after I realized how much money I would have to spend on black background pieces. After finishing the first planet (Earth), I found some black base plates on ebay.
 |
| Goodbye tan baseplate, hello black baseplate |
After the first two were done, we got into a rhythm and pushed out the rest in quick order. I wasn't planning on making the sun, but I accidentally ordered too many baseplates and figured why not.
 |
| Keep an eye on Uranus' rings |
Assembly
I mounted the plates to a 1/4 inch piece of wood that is 6 feet long. I painted it black and attached each plate using liquid nails adhesive.
Extra Credit
I decided to try to add some additional fun themes to my solar system. I played around with making some things using my extra pieces, but I couldn’t get them to look quite right.
I was trying to find a way to make a convincing Starship Enterprise when it occurred to me that my strategy suggested two-dimensional thinking. That’s when I found lots of instructions and small sets on ebay - a TARDIS, X-wing, TIE Fighter, etc.
 |
| My first attempt, any guesses as to what some of these are? |
Final Result
After I had pretty much finished, a friend pointed out that Uranus’ rings we situated more North-to-South. One advantage of using Lego is that you can change things fairly easily.
This project cost me about $300:
- $200 - Legos
- $60 - Baseplates
- $30 - wood
- $10 - glue, picture hangers, etc
