LEGO Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket nearly big enough to fly to the moon

LEGO Certified Professional Ryan McNaught (The BrickMan) recently built what is likely the first and only minifig-scale Saturn V rocket, complete with gantry. At 5.76 meters (nearly 19 feet) tall and 120,000 bricks, it’s certainly huge, but I love the details Ryan built into the rocket, including liquid fuel tanks and the NASA Astrovan.

Me next to the Saturn V

See more photos in the photoset on Flickr.

Thanks to everyone who sent us the link!

7 comments on “LEGO Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket nearly big enough to fly to the moon

  1. Mike

    I LOVE that tower. Sometimes I forget that brick stacking can look good as long as you do it on a large nough scale.

    To nitpick, this is not actually minifig scale. Going off the height of the rocket it’s 1:20.

    Though if you were to go off the diameter it would be about 1:37, which is a nice minifig scale. How’d it get so tall?

  2. The Mad Physicist

    ^That’s more or less what I thought. It’s obviously an impressive MOC, but it would actually be more accurate if it were about half as tall. The Saturn V is something like a 100 meters tall, so scaled 1/40 it should be about 2.5 m -not 5.76 m.
    Size obviously matters ;-)

  3. reload

    The tower including the base and lightning rod is 5.76m tall, the rocket itself is just over 4m tall.

    As for Minifig scale thats an incredibly subjective scale given how fat they are :)

    There is also plenty of other things which are not accurate with it, such as the size of the launch pad, the gap between the rocket and the tower etc etc, but it does have to be transported easily, therefore compromises have to be made when working at this size.

  4. Mike

    I went one step further ralph, the rocket’s not actually 5.76, it’s about 440 bricks (pretty trivial to count if you use the tower–I think I’m remembering right) that means the height is scaled 1:26. The rocket height is closer to 4 meters, so I think the 5.76 must come from the overall display.

  5. Jean C

    Trying to calculate a numeric value for ‘minifig scale’ is a little like trying to build circular things assuming the value of pi is 3. It’s a great idea, would make the mathematics easier, but it’s never going to work out.

    I look forward to seeing the aircraft carrier Ryan is going to build for Brickvention 2013 (to pick up the returned astronauts). And also Richard Nixon as a minifig.

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