LEGO City is one of those themes that has never really blown me away. I like it just fine but it can feel a bit too grounded. Or sometimes a bit too fantastical – I’m looking at you Sky Police. It has then come as a bit of a surprise that the 2019 City Space sets have completely won me over.
I recently built 60227 Lunar Space Station and while a space station orbiting the moon is inherently cool, this set has an extra cool factor. This set is inspired by actual NASA mission objectives. In fact all of the 2019 City Space sets are based on real projects and concepts from NASA.
NASA has a goal to return humans to the surface of the moon by 2024 and beyond that to send a human to the surface of Mars. This project is called Artemis, named for the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology. Just like the Apollo project, Artemis will feature a series of different missions each with different objectives. One major difference between Apollo and Artemis is that this time NASA wants to go to the moon to stay.
The Lunar Gateway will be an orbital space station built in various stages. It will serve as a base for landing crews, a laboratory and communications hub. Essentially providing the same role that Columbia did during Apollo 11, but on a much grander scale.
60227 Lunar Space Station presents the idealised version of the Lunar Gateway concept. There’s a kitchen module, living module and a lab. Each module is well detailed with lots of fun little additions. There’s space pizza! The modules are all connected via technic pins allowing you to change the configuration to your liking. This modular nature is a good demonstration of how the real Lunar Gateway will be built.
I also really like that the crew includes male and female minifigures. In total there have been 12 people who walked on the moon. All of them men. Since then there have been a lot of women joining the astronaut program and one objective of the Artemis program is for the first woman to walk on the moon.
With the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 taking place earlier this year it’s hard to not reflect on how much progress has been made since then and it’s surprisingly pretty mixed. We’ve got the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. But the US doesn’t have the ability to send astronauts there themselves. At the same time a number of private space companies are pushing boundaries (there’s a car in space everybody!).
Before getting this set I only had a vague idea of what NASA was looking to achieve. This set inspired me to research and explore and get excited about what is happening. I don’t expect LEGO to be an educational toy, but it’s pretty delightful when it is. Here it is done not through snippets of information in the instructions but by being a prompt for further discovery. If you’ve got a kid with any interest in space then I strongly suggest getting them some of the 2019 City Space sets and discussing the real Artemis program with them.
Now that I have finished with the review of this set it’s going to become something for my son to play with. As he plays with it this set can be the catalyst for a discussion about space. One day, when he’s watching the first human step foot on Mars, he might think back to playing with this set. That’s pretty cool to me.
This set was provided to me by LEGO at my request. Opinions expressed are my own.
Fabulous idea Michael! Thanks for taking the time to post this. I collected “classic” space when I was a child and have originals of those 1978-1980 sets, though my parents pockets weren’t deep enough to afford the larger sets (getting 918 – One man spaceship for my 10th birthday for $20 was mind blowing – I played with that set and modified it for years!) 10 years ago, after my children and I had been to a Lego exhibition on Phillip Island, I went home and got out an old metal bucket with all my old space sets in it. Thanks to brickset we were able to put the sets back together (as I’d thrown out all the instructions as a kid!); amazingly none of the pieces were missing! I purchased the larger sets to fulfill a childhood dream and have fallen back in love with Lego as a result. I’m running out of “space” to display the sets at home and have to be very judicious about what I buy now, but your review has tempted me to revisit the Space theme. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep them for my grandchildren!
That’s a great Lego story Mark! Thank you for sharing 🙂
I love these sets as well. I recently built the Deep Space Rocket and Launch Control, and it has been a great play set for me and my four year old daughter who adores space!