Neo Classic Space

A year ago today Neo Classic Space was born - not the name, and certainly not the building style, both of which had been around for several years - but the website.

It was originally envisioned as a place for a small group of builders to hang out. They had been building Neo Classic Space models and wanted a place to keep track of their LL Registration Numbers. There was talk of adding in models by other builders, but that was as far as it was expected to go.

However, before long they had some pretty cool stuff on the site and they thought it would be nice to share it with the rest of the world. Someone suggested holding an event to launch it, but what sort of event?

Then someone asked when exactly did LEGO first release the original Classic Space sets? Expert archivists were consulted. The first catalogues showing Classic Space were from 1979. Back then the catalogues and new sets always came out at Easter, usually sometime in March (you may see references saying 1978, but the main release was certainly 1979).

Celebrating 30 years of Classic Space seemed like the perfect occasion to launch the site. But how? What better way than by building tribute models? How about one for every year Classic Space has been around? How about one for every day in March?

Anerew Lee (onosendai2600) has built a rather wonderful microscale "Institute of Classic Space"...

It's part of his rather spectacular Splaris 8 space station.

We're now eagerly awaiting the minifig scale version!

And another quick blog post from me...

I wanted to highlight this NCS space station construction by L.D.M. with its unusual zig-zag pattern on the walls, signposts used as stanchions, and X-Pod on the greebly roof with the satellite dish.

That's not all, though. the station has a a cool feature: the door-hatch folds down creating an integral staircase to the interior.  Luxury for Federation Spacemen more used to buildings with no fourth wall!

The Classic Space Federation were subjected to unprovoked attacks both against our colonies and an electronic attack on the Federation Information Network. During this attack, an alien computer virus penitrated Federation systems causing false claims of victories against Federation outposts.

Please rest assured that the claims were a weak attempt to cause undue panic among citizens. The attacks were easily repelled, and all Federation colonies are now back to normal. If you experience any difficulties contacting relatives in other colonies, please do not be alarmed, it is just a temporary glitch caused by damage to sattelites during the attacks.

Federation forces have traced the attack to a hidden base on Preliumtarn and are preparing to mount a counter-attack.

Our engineers are working to eliminate the virus from our network. Systems are mostly back to normal, but we would ask you to stay away from this section.

In our last entry, we left the story of the Statue unfinished. For our last entry of the month, we complete the story with Mark Stafford's LL-930 Star Fleet Infinitum-A.

The Infinitum-A was built with new technology and the remains of the almost destroyed LL929. A new statue had been cast and was to be delivered to the site of the first Moonbase. This custom homage to the original space heroes was commission for this single flight.

In order to discourage bandit attack this time the rear section was built with a homing hyperdrive engine that would instantaneously return the rear module to Earth. However the front was a formidable fighter capable of holding it's own even against the technological marvels of the Green Jelly like Invaders of Mars.

Today we conclude our little trek through the Classic Space Federation with Mark Stafford's LL-929 Star Fleet Infinitum. Mark has managed to get hold of some parts from the new Space Police sets, making us all very envious.

The designation LL929 was one of several that was strangely unused (or perhaps for used on a top secret test vehicle) during the time of 'classic' space exploration, almost thirty years later, after the fractioning of human space into the colonies we know today, the government of Earth commissioned this one of a kind custom vessel to make a very special delivery.

We're changing things around a little for the last day of our 30th anniversary celebration, posting a bonus first and making you wait for the main model of the day.

Pete Reid's LL-497 has been around for a little while, and can't be considered for the month long celebration as it wasn't specially built. However, a little collaboration with Stuart Crawshaw and me produced a rather beautiful piece of set box art.

Stuart provided the landing pad, while the crater plate was mine. Pete added the rover and moonbase, as well as LL-497 that gives the set it's name. We wanted to get it as close as possible to the original 928 set box image. Pete says he took about 300 photos to try to get it all to look right, but I think the results are well worth it. Thanks to Ian Greig for fixing up my photo editing efforts.

Nnenn has been busy in the last few days of March, producing even more amazing models.

His Heavy Striker is a lovely piece of kit for the Federation pilots.

The Recon Scout and Ugokin crawler are both really beautiful builds:

What's not to love about the Egronga Hunter, particularly the beautiful curves on the wings.

And last, but certainly not least, the Enforcer Battle Platform is another stunning piece of work, with its excellent tracked feed, and its stunning array of guns and rockets.

We've covered Monkfish's microscale creations before, and we think his latest heavy gunship is another fantastic little ship.

Great work getting so many different angles in such a small space. I hope you'll build this to minifig scale one day!

We've mentioned before that we like rockets at Neo Classic space, and Chris Pockster's launch site is no exception.

The design may be fairly simple, but the use of parts is quite excellent, particularly the fences for blast deflectors.

Chris has also built a really nice radar buggy. I'mvery fond of the mud-guard design, with echoes of the old 2x4 mudguard plates

Keep up the grerat work, Chris (but don't expect us to make an exception for improper spacemen next time).