Brett’s review of LEGO’s Saturn V

I am somewhat of a Rocket nut. I have always been fascinated by space and all the aspects of space travel and exploration. Like many men, there is a boy inside me who absolutely loves LEGO. So when I first heard about the LEGO Saturn V set, I immediately knew that I just had to have it.

The Saturn V is perhaps one of the most impressive machines ever built, and, it was built and launched to the moon over 50 years ago. This means that some engineering genius went into the design of this rocket, with one of the key aspects being the Lunar rendezvous of the moon lander and command module (which if you are interested in, you can read up on).

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the box that this LEGO set comes in is stunning. You can immediately tell how much detail has gone into the design of this scale replica. And you will begin to understand how intricate of a build this is going to be.

Unpacking the box is bag after bag of beautiful LEGO, almost 2000 pieces of it. And once all the bags of blocks are unpacked, you find the build instructions, which is a bound book with page after page of detailed instructions. More than 170 pages of instructions, so you know there is lots of building ahead of you.

I loved watching the build come together piece by piece. I wasn’t expecting there to be so much detail to go into the internal bits of the rocket. Parts that are not ever going to be seen when complete have such intricate detail for what seems like no reason. Part of the reason is to add structural stability, and its impressive how they do this which what seems like little finicky pieces. But another reason I believe they did this, is so that you feel like you are building the complicated inner structure of a rocket capable of landing a man on the moon.

A key bit of detail of this build is that all the flags and wording one the rocket are printed on the pieces, and are not stickers, which makes a bigger difference than you might think.

This all makes for a stunning display piece, which will look great on a mantle or shelf (using the provided mounts), and is also a set you can really play with, recreating the whole Apollo mission, with stage separations, lunar rendezvous, and a cute little lunar module which fits inside the fairings of the main craft.