In Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Launch of Apollo 11!

I bought this a couple months back, afraid that it'd run out of stock or something, and kept it sitting quietly next to my desk for that time. Today is the day I finally build it! Or start to... everyone I've talked to who's built it took days.

This set is the Saturn V. Weighing in at 6.5 million pounds (3 million kilograms), standing 363 feet tall (111 meters), and 33 feet wide (10 meters), it produced almost 8 million pounds of thrust from the five F1 engines on the first stage. (35 thousand kilonewtons.) It remains to this day the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever to reach operational status. It could put 300,000 pounds (140,000 kilograms) into low earth orbit, or send 107,000 pounds (48,000 kilograms) to the moon. The design was launched 13 times with 12 successes; Apollo 6 experienced some upper-stage engine failures that messed up the orbit, resulting in the mission being deemed a "partial failure" or "partial success" depending on who you ask.

The first 12 launches were all for the Apollo program (APollo 4, 6, and 8 through 17), and the final launch put the Skylab space station into orbit in a single go. Two more vehicles were built but not used due to cutbacks in funding; their stages are on display at various space centers and science museums. It cost around 185 million dollars, or a billion dollars of today's money, to launch just one of these to the moon.

My apologies ahead of time if the camera angles are imperfect; I just grabbed my phone at opportune moments and snapped photos then returned to being an 8-year-old again.

This is the most bags I've ever seen out of a LEGO set! I tried to arrange them in order, but 10 and 11 are swapped and I didn't notice till after the picture was taken, so I left it there so that the internet has something to giggle at besides cats and body parts.

The result of the first bag! This is all structural elements for the first stage. Two or three of my eyebrows raised at how haphazard parts of it look but it's strangely solid.

Bag 2 contained external paneling for the first stage.

Bag 3 contained yet more paneling.

Bag 4, again, had more paneling. The sheer quantity of bricks for just one stage is amazing.

Bag 5 filled in the gaps!

Bag 6 was just for the five massive F1 engines! These are marvels of technology that are still mindblowing by today's standards. Especially if you stand under them.

The fully completed S-IC first stage! This thing would burn 20 tons of fuel per second, almost as much as a Dodge Hellcat!

Bag 7 had the structural elements for the second stage. The top part looks like a very screwed-up burger someone once tried to sell me.

Bag 8 had some paneling and nifty "UNITED STATES" bricks. I was very surprise, by the way, that all lettering is printed onto the bricks; I can't feel it with my finger or catch it with my nail. I'm used to having to carefully position stickers on stuff, so this is a pleasant deal.

Bag 9 contained yet more paneling. Almost done with this stage!

Bag 10 contained the final paneling and the five J2 engines, optimized for upper atmosphere/vacuum operation. The S-II second stage is now complete! Over 90% of the stage's mass was propellant, consisting of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to burn it. The temperatures were colder than a cranky ex.

A closeup of the J2 engines. They were very cleverly designed to only use a few bricks and still look like the real thing.

The second stage atop the first! This is, in essence, the entire launch vehicle. The third stage was primarily for propelling the astronauts to the moon, though it also helped complete the parking orbit. Fun fact: the Skylab space station was placed atop these two stages for the final Saturn V mission, so that launch had no third stage.

Bag 11 contained the completed lunar transfer stage (3rd stage) if you don't count the fairings. It has a single J2 vacuum engine. Fun fact: this stage was the only one small enough to be transported by air, aboard a specially-designed cargo plane nicknamed "Pregnant Guppy."

The third stage atop the first two.

From bag 12, the command module and launch-escape system atop the rocket. The bag also contained some additional scenes, shown further down!

The launch-escape system (LES) is the white tower-like structure atop the command module. In the event that something went drastically wrong with the launch, the command module capsule would detach and rocket motors in the LES, angled to keep exhaust away from the astronauts, would yank the spacecraft rapidly away from the rest of the rocket. A few seconds later, if the rocket was in the air, explosive charges would breach the fuel tanks and the whole thing would go Big Boom, so only small light metal bits would flutter down and hopefully not attempt to cosplay as hats or roof tiles. The LES was ejected once in orbit.

The fully completed Saturn V rocket, with a (root) beer bottle for scale. I surprised myself by finishing the entire set in five hours, excluding breaks for food, bathroom, and various interruptions; likely my building speed is due to spending most of my childhood ankle-deep in LEGO. I have to say, this is one of the most brilliantly-designed sets I've ever had the pleasure of building! The internal structure is complicated yet very strong, and allows the outside bricks to stay secure. I only with the stage separation didn't tend to cause pieces to occasionally drop off; this happens because I have to pull very hard, thus making separation very sudden and sharp. Still, I imagine it's necessary to have them actually stay put together under their weight.

Someday I will probably dismantle the set just to rebuild it again!

On the stands, with the additional scenes laid out. The stands are, of course, LEGO bricks from bag 12.

The splashdown scene. At some point the Navy will stop shadowing Soviet ships long enough to pick up the astronauts...

A brick separator was included! I didn't actually own one before so this was a wonderful inclusion.

A few spare pieces in case you lose some, plus a couple spare astronauts in case Apollo 13 doesn't get back.

The command module. The little RCS maneuvering-thruster-pods on the sides make me grin.

The command module with the lander docked. Fun fact: the lander, once undocked, could not actually ignite the descent engine until the landing legs deployed, as a failsafe.

The lander scene, with two astronauts posing. The other one is watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show in the command module, orbiting the moon.

The top half of the lander detaches to return to the command module. The bottom half stays put to safeguard the flag left behind against aliens.

The lander can alternately sit atop the third stage. A shame the fairings cannot open on hinges historically, it looked like a really fat 2-petal flower and was iconic.

A likely unnecesary closeup of the payload fairing on the third stage, with the lander hiding cheekily inside, refusing to open the pod bay doors.

This is the lunar transfer stage. I took this photo last minute when I realized it was the only one missing. The first two stages work together to place this almost in orbit, then this stage completes the job. Unlike a lot of rocket engines, this one can be restarted, so that the long burn to intercept the Moon can begin! Once that's done, the command module detaches, the fairings open, the command module docks to the lander and pulls it free, then the third stage did one of two things.

On early Apollo missions it would use the Moon's gravity to slingshot out of Earth orbit into an orbit around the sun, where it wouldn't pose a collision risk. From Apollo 13 onwards, they told it to crash into the Moon, and seismometers left by previous missions would read the impact and map the interior of the Moon based on how the shock traveled.

The instruction manual, in three languages, though I only understood one. It has a few pages of fun information on the rocket and the mission before the actual instruction starts. There are a total of 337 steps to assemble this set.

Presumably mandatory FP edit: whatintarnation. Was just going to bed as I have work in the morning and now I'll never keep up on all the comments. XD send cool spaceship pics