Soviet Moon Landing

This set has less than 100 days left, and is sadly projected to fall tremendously short of 10K supporters. I do believe that this is a good set, but I also believe that the massive decorative base was its killer. I do plan on resubmitting it at some point within the next few months, with much better renders now that I have POV-Ray up and running again (and I've finally got the lighting just right, too!). It will also have improved functions, like collapsible landing gear and better access to the interior. It will be more stable too, making it a playable set rather than a static display. The color scheme will also be different, going away with the forest green (which was used for full-scale models in the N-1 tests) and using instead silver and tan (intended for use on the Moon). A completely new base will be built for it as well (I plan on it being under 200 pieces), and I think that this set will also include a 7K-LOK (based upon my modular Soyuz MOC) the Lunokhod rover, and a microscale N-1 rocket (about 16.8 cm in height) with launch stand. Altogether I'm estimating a 1500 to 2000 piece set that is will be better, and more playable, than this current version! 

My latest project, Fobos 2, will be submitted here in the day or two. Also, my POV-Ray converter is working again, so I can finish making renders for the LK Lander set. 

A nice little tease for my latest creation, under construction... 100 yen for anybody who can guess what this is! Well, not really...

Here are some better views of the LK Lander interior. The hatch took me several weeks, perhaps even a couple months to figure out, but in the end I came up with a very simple mechanism for opening and closing the LK hatch. The interior had very limited controls and two windows, which were tinted yellow to negate the bright reflectivity of the Lunar surface. Almost all of the equipment, cameras, tools, and the flag, were kept in the lander, but would be removed upon ascent to make room for moonrocks. Oh, and the unedited version of Leonov saluting the Soviet Flag is also included here. 

Here are some more pics of the LK Lander in LDD. Four full-on views and two others showing the separate descent and ascent stages. Enjoy!

This is a view of the interior in LDD. Hopefully I will be able to create POV-Ray renders of this awesome and detailed interior soon. In the meantime, I hope this is enough, and at least this picture has a decent (but not as good as I had hoped) view of the mechanism to open and close the hatch. The overhead computer display had to be hidden in order to see the rest of the interior. One bad thing about this set is that I never could figure out how to get the top section to remove easily enough to make the interior playable. I figure if I get 10,000 votes the LEGO designers will be able to come up with a solution.