Itty Bitty Rants

Infrequent posts about stuff.

An epic Micropolis module idea

I scored big at a garage sale yesterday. Matt, a fellow TwinLUG member, had mentioned there was a huge number of sets available at a garage sale in New Brighton and that there had still been many left when he went back on Sunday. Since it was pretty close to J’s house I figured I’d take a few minutes and take a look. I came away with a large tub full of mostly LEGO monorail parts for not nearly as much money as it should have cost.

I was thinking of things I could do with my newly acquired monorail parts and ran some interesting calculations. At Micropolis scale the Vehicle Assembly Building is 58 bricks and 1 plate tall, 99.5 studs long, and 69 studs wide. The Crawler is 2 bricks to 3 bricks high (can raise and lower a bit), 17.5 studs long, and 15.2 studs wide. The tracks are 1 stud wide, and there are four pairs of tracks at the four corners of the vehicle with the motor for that corner between the pair. The Mobile Launch Platform which sits on top of the crawler is 2 bricks and 2 plates high, 21 studs long and 18 studs wide.

I’m wondering about the feasibility of putting together an oversized module with the VAB and a length of monorail track that runs a Crawler vehicle out to a launch gantry. I think if I took some liberties with the crawler design I could disguise the monorail motor as a rocket on top of the Crawler.

I think I am going to have to work on this virtually initially just to get an idea of how many parts I’m going to need for the VAB, since while I have a lot of parts these days I don’t have that many actual bricks and those will be needed most for that building. That and an awful lot of plates for the rest of the module.