The Martian

Thanks to member GoodOlives for notifying me of my extremely inaccurate Pathfinder design! I'm actually slightly embarrassed. The communications array had wheels, too many sides, and the wrong camera- I may or may not have been looking at a picture of the complete wrong rover, and only by luck did it turn out being recognizable as Pathfinder. Then, I went and accidentally built Curiosity instead of Sojourner. So that's awkward. Now, I present you the shiny, new, and accurate Sojourner and Pathfinder!

I'd also like to say thanks to all you supporters. We're halfway to the first milestone of 1,000 votes!

I've finally finished my model of the Ares 3 Mars rover! I took most of my inspiration from the movie, but changed some of it in order to make it Lego-compatible. Certain aspects of the movie's design simply don't work out with Lego bricks.

Anyways, the model itself features a rotatable front wheel axis to allow smooth turning, an articulated trailer connector, and opening sides for accessibility. 

I didn't attach any pictures of the inside, because frankly, it's a mess. I'm pretty bad at balancing the exterior and interiors of vehicles, so I'll rely on the expertise of the Lego design team to beautify it if the project is approved.

Here's a back view of the rover:

The addition of the rover bumps the piece total up to around eight hundred. In order to keep the set from getting too expensive, I may consider removing the solar panel field. It's not a particularly interesting build, and it's hard to get an accurate number of panels on there without making the baseplate too large. I'll probably try to find a different way to incorporate some Mars terrain into the set.

So today I decided that I really didn't like the Hab's exterior design, so I went around and made a few improvements. I also added an American flag to the outside, like in the movie. Please excuse my awful photo painting skills. Apologies also for not rendering it in POV-Ray, but my computer can take hours or even days to do one picture and I really didn't want to wait that long for something small like this.

I'm going to see The Martian again soon, so I'll get working on the rover right away afterwards!

The countdown is over; The Martian movie premieres in the USA at midnight tonight! To celebrate, I've made my own version of the promo poster, with a Lego spin on things.

One thing that could be expected in future updates is the addition of one of the rovers that the Ares 3 mission used. As soon as I can get a good look at them on the big screen, I'll be trying to convert them to a Lego model that won't make the set too big and expensive.

To finish, I'd like to thank all one-hundred and twenty-eight of you who have supported this project so far! You're all awesome. Onwards and upwards to 10k!