NASA Sends Lego Figures to Jupiter 164
bLanark writes "NASA have teamed up with Lego and will send three specially crafted, minifigures towards Jupiter in a probe to be launched on an Atlas V rocket on Friday. The figures, representing Roman gods Jupiter and Juno, and astronomer Galileo, are machined from aluminum and are the normal size for Lego minifigures. From the article: 'This (until now) secret installation was initiated by NASA scientists, who love Lego as much as anyone and wanted to do something memorable for this mission. They approached Lego and the company loved the idea. It saw the project as a way to promote children’s education and STEM programs.'"
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A Lego Odyssey
they should have at least thrown in a standard 8x2 thin black piece mounted vertically as a joke
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That would have made it perfect!
"Dave,what are you doing with the Duplo. Dave?"
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I think you mean 9x4.
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How naive to assume that the series ends there, in only three dimensions...
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They don't normally have aluminium figures either.
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If only there was some way you could hook different pieces to each other to make the desired shape.
cue confused aliens in 3..2.. (Score:2)
next thing you know, some aliens will conclude that there were once a shriving civilization on Jupiter, but vanished abruptly...
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Haha.. funny that that's a real word [dictionary.com]
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Lets knock the trolls out of the way (Score:5, Informative)
0) NASA approached Lego
1) Lego underwrote the project; 5K per mini
2) Using identifiable objects is a great way to get kids interested in science.
Re:Lets knock the trolls out of the way (Score:5, Insightful)
3) It's just f'ing kewl.
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*golf clap*
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I'm sure I once saw one of those magnetic office toys with lego bricks - definitely had the one with the circular pad and the diamond shaped leaves.
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Can I interest you in a course in HTML [lissaexplains.com]?
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No, but you can interest me in an 'edit' feature for slashdot to fix simple typos.
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That's silly. I became interested in computers as a result of wanting to play video games. One day I thought... What is this box the game runs on, anyway? I started digging, and I've been trotting Fortune-50s ever since.
Getting kids interested in the tiniest corner of a field of science is a great way to open the door to bigger and better interests.
Kids who love LEGO are thinkers, dreamers, and imagineers. If LEGO becomes their ingress point to astronomy, who are you to judge? Bottom line, this is a great i
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I guess the depends on what age we are talking about.
I guess if you had your way you would just slap down a book on the maths of orbital mechanics and say 'read up kid, it's cool, homey'
Something has to catch their interest. Going to Jupiter is only cool and awe inspiring when you can only understand how far away it is, and the science that can be done. Until then, using Lego to get interest is fine.
My name, my wife's name, and my kids names are on Mars, and also on an comet. When my kids where old enough,
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How about a book about the solar system, with nice glossy pictures of all the planets ? That's what my generation had as kids.
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Probes going to Jupiter is a pretty abstract concept to younger kids. They might understand that this machine is flying through space to another planet, but it doesn't relate to anything they've seen or done. Add Lego figures into the mix and it relates to something they've seen and done. They've played with Legos before. So now it becomes Legos (similar to the ones in their own room) being flung through space to arrive on a completely different planet. Teens and older can appreciate the scientific ach
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[[citation needed]]
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Get used to it.
NASA's budget is a dried scab because NASA has been preternaturally awful at getting anyone but its existing acolytes interested in anything it does.
Yes, it had Apollo, and Skylab, and the Shuttle, but it had a naive attitude towards PR, thinking that getting Presidents to praise you is enough.
If this is what it takes to get onto on the cover of Wired, then this is what they need more of.
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The PR thing amuses me. There was the press conference today about MAYBE water on Mars. WTF? If it is above 75% certainty, say "We found water on Mars!" Any less certainty than 75%, why say anything at all?
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There have been/are lego space sets. One had Moon tiles [blogspot.com] (two L shaped tile craters, a yellow line runway and landing pad) along with spaceships, roving vehicles and a few astronauts.
The fun thing I remember from those days was having those battery packs, wires and little lighting bricks and the transparent coloured bricks. It was fun to modify a standard lego model and add motors/lights everywhere, then switch the room lights off.
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Stop using a computer. Stop driving a modern car. And stop receiving modern health care. Stop talking on a cell phone. Stop watching cable (cable gets much of its programming from Satellite) or satellite tv. Stop using GPS. All this is because of the space program.
And stop posting on slashdot, that is theft of service from your employer.
Sure, it's cute and fun now (Score:2)
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We have our own LEGO machines to combat against the ones they send.
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Or the aliens will invade, expecting mini-fig sized people.
COOL!
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We'll combat them with toddlers who destroy their Lego machines. Of course, they will fight back with Lego mines planted all over the Earth that hurt our feet when we step on them. Wait... (checks living room where my kids were playing) the aliens have already invaded!!!
Juno got the shaft (Score:2)
Looks like Juno got the short end of the design stick. Where the other two characters got custom beards, tools and whatnot...she got flowing hair and a frying pan?
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Material Science 101 (Score:4, Funny)
a magnifying glass, because she can "peer into the heart of Jupiter"
Then they should have made that part out of transparent aluminum. ;)
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Re:Juno got the shaft (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, she is a married god, so a cooking utensil is quite appropriate. Especially with that flat a chest.*ducks*
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Looks like Juno got the short end of the design stick. Where the other two characters got custom beards, tools and whatnot...she got flowing hair and a frying pan?
Flowing hair = good frying pan = magnifying glass OOHHH DOH
You want Juno should have a beard? (Score:2)
I know she is Greek but come on, we can at least PRETEND she doesn't have a beard you could loose a badger in.
And as far I know Lego doesn't do boobies. Probably to avoid boys being afraid of sharp edges or girl afraid of them falling off if you wiggle them to much.
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girl afraid of them falling off if you wiggle them to much.
Speaking as a guy, that would be most unfortunate.
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If Lego did do boobies maybe some of us would start playing with legos again ;)
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some of us would start playing with legos again
Every time an American says "legos", Denmark dies a little inside.
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If Lego did do boobies maybe some of us would start playing with legos again ;)
I wouldn't, who would want to play with tiny, hard plastic boobies.
Note: I still play with Legos as I now have kids old enough to play with them and it appears that they have moved away from the massive amounts of specialty pieces they had about a decade ago.
Shame on NASA .. (Score:2)
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Haha. There's always hope of escape. It's Hollywood! Even within the orbit of Megaclite [wikipedia.org]!
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Maybe this could be the plot of Toy Story 4. The toys somehow wind up aboard an interplanetary probe and must figure out a way to divert it back to Earth before it crashes, stranding or destroying them. It's revealed that Buzz Lightyear actually knows a great deal about astrophysics. (He is a space toy, after all.)
juno site sucks (Score:3)
The juno mission web site is a gigantic, slothlike, steaming pile of crap. It takes forever to load, plays music, makes your computer get hot which causes the fans to crank up, forces you to read agonizingly slow text that fades in, etc... I couldn't even find what I was looking for so I just closed the tab. What a huge waste of money.
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The juno mission web site is a gigantic, slothlike, steaming pile of crap. It takes forever to load, plays music, makes your computer get hot which causes the fans to crank up, forces you to read agonizingly slow text that fades in, etc... I couldn't even find what I was looking for so I just closed the tab. What a huge waste of money.
So... it's like a wife [wikipedia.org]?
P.S. For those who still don't get the joke: Juno is the Roman goddess of marriage.
Next up... (Score:2)
What they should next is throw a teapot
Russel will turn in his grave.
So Who Says... (Score:2)
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Pretty much everyone who reads the article.
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WANT! (Score:2)
Especially the Galileo.
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if lego is smart, they'll market copies
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(Can't say too much bad about Lego right now- having too much fun with my son's new Mindstorms kit.)
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I want a Galileo, and a Newton, and an Einstein, and a Schrodinger (but no stupid cat!), and a Hawking.
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The Schrodinger minifig package comes with a smaller opaque package that both contains and doesn't contain a cat until someone opens it.
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Or maybe it does, until they open it.
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http://helektron.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/stephenhawking.jpg [helektron.com]
$5000 per figure??? WTF? (Score:2)
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Great. Now get them up there.
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I'll bet some collector would pay ten times that to have one of these on his shelf. Imagine how much they'll be worth when they get to Jupiter!
When it's profitable to send a probe to bring them back and stick them on Ebay, we've won. :)
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A) You have to actually retool a piece of equipment to meet Lego's very precise measurements. I doubt you could do that.
B) You have to pay for the material.
C) You have to pay to have it done.
D) You have to pay the people who designed them.
F) You have to account for mistakes
G) You need to ship them
H) You need to be sure the are placed on the spacecraft to exact specs.
News flash: The world is bigger then your little mind, and shit costs money to do.
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You would need a 5th axis to do the 3D millwork efficiently which makes setup a little more complex. The cost of $5k probably includes CAD/CAM design time as well.
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yea nasa would never chuck useless crap like legos on a rocket ... oh wait
This is the future of NASA (Score:2)
Next up: CERN (Score:2)
In which they'll collide them in the hope of seeing the Higgs Mechano.
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Or maybe superduplo.
Should've sent Lego Vader (Score:2)
Just to let those Jovian bitches know we're coming to take over!
LEGO and MER (Score:2)
These LEGO figurines look awesome! My hat's off to the JUNO team!
We sent (flattened) LEGO figurines aboard the MER landers, too (not on the rovers proper). Their names were Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust, if I recall correctly. See my blog [blogspot.com] for a terrific color picture of Spirit's LEGO figurine before she drove away.
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You think this giant advertisment for LEGO is going to be paid in 'taxpayer dollars' ?
Re:Approximate cost (Score:5, Informative)
Gee, I wonder where such information might be found?
I understand that you might not read the article, a lot of people don't. But, really, if you wanted more detailed information, the article might be a good place to start.
And, failing that, there's a comment a little above yours (Subject="Let's knock the trolls out of the way") that also answers your question.
And, in case you got this far without looking up there out of a sense of embarrassment if nothing else, the answer to your question is yes, LEGO is paying NASA $5,000 per figure to send them to Jupiter, or about five times what you estimate it'll cost.
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The thing is, it is often necessary to add a bit of ballast to a spaceflight in order to keep everything in balance. That can either be boring lead bars or cool lego figures. Effectively, they got Lego to subsidize the cost of some of the ballast. Cost to taxpayer: -$1.
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Lego paid for it.
And it doesn't literally use money as fuel.
They will use X amount of fuel with, or without this items.
And it's cost is 5 Grand, again paid for by Lego.
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Sounds like it was funded by Lego. Nevertheless, while there is a certain cool/nostalgia factor, it does seem sad that we are sending toys into space at the same time as the shuttle program ends and American manned space flight enters a hiatus of unknown duration.
It is the cart before the horse - if we are taking the trouble to send toys to space, shouldn't we also be sending kids to play with those toys?
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It is the cart before the horse - if we are taking the trouble to send toys to space, shouldn't we also be sending kids to play with those toys?
I have a couple I would considering donating to the cause. The oldest loves legos
Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)
Stop wasting so much energy on being cranky. You'll give yourself an ulcer.
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or add some more scientific equipment so every ounce of space is used effectively and not "for fun for the children who probably wont even be told about this" bullshit
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I'm sure re-designing the entire spacecraft to shove an extra sensor in there would have been MUCH cheaper that adding a couple ounces of ballast!
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Rockets like the Atlas V 551 are sold at a certain price. They can lift a certain amount to a certain velocity. If your spacecraft happens to be just slightly under the mass threshold you need it to be to achieve the desired velocity, then you can pretty much put whatever you want on it as long as you remain under that mass threshold.
Believe it or not, not everything cool that happens is not a giant conspiracy by a large corporation in an at
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So fuck it lets remove every chunk of scientific equipment and send a fucking garbage can of higest bidders trinkets and toys, there was room to put metal legos there was room for 1 more fucking sensor that could have done something other than go along for the ride
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How about this? How about you give me a link to a company that makes a sensor, or a link to the sensor itself, that weighs about as much as the Lego figurines, that requires no additional calibration or testing, that could survive within the environmental envelope this spacecraft will see, and that costs less than $15,000. Go ahead, I'll wait.
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Lego paid for it, sooo.....
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thats fine but where is the scientific equipment we paid to fill this thing. obviously its not filled
its like this, if you paid for a full dump truck of gravel and later found out it was cut a little short so it can be topped off with mulch and your still paying full price of the delivery, you would be asking questions.
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Lego has a history of promoting science and kids education.
Contrary to the belief of small mind idiots, sometime companies do things because they feel it's right. Does Lego really need more promotion? is there some American kid going "Lego? never heard of it. I'll go check them out."?
No, there isn't.
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NASA didn't fund this. The probe to Jupiter was an existing project with a real (non-Lego-related) purpose. They thought it'd be fun to toss some Lego minifigs in the probe. So they approached Lego who paid for the figures to be made. NASA had a zero net cost for including these figures versus not including them. (A few ounces of aluminum isn't going to cost much more in rocket fuel.)
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yea thats what we need, more politics in nasa
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LEGO is probably paying something, otherwise I agree.
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Lego Capricorn 1: The Lego Jupiter mission was a fake, and three Lego figures who Know Too Much are now being pursued across the California desert...