hmm. is that dark green or bright green space guy?

Not sure how a wheelchair would work in zero gravity, but it's cool.

The moon has low gravity not zero.

@kyrodes I wonder how a wheelchair works on rough terrain but is seems they made a special speeder for hime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQ1euxgs4I start watching at 1:33

This is a nice small set. Was on the fence about the big set in this wave but now may need to get that one to add this one on to. I'm a bit surprised at the Target pre-order price as it seems that quite a few of these City Space sets are being reasonably priced this year. I may just go ahead & place a pre-order for it since I've a bunch of Target Gift Cards to use.

Are the big spherical window segments in trans-black? That would be a great recolour for those

Reminds me of the Hab from The Martian. I hold out hope for a The Martian set, like the one on Ideas ATM.

The little alien has the City Space symbol on his suit.

So either the aliens liked the design of the human astronaut suits so much that they decided to make their own (although, how? That would require a major manufacturing process), or the astronauts themselves just happened to have a suit, in the right size for small aliens that they weren't expecting to meet.

But why would they ask the alien to wear a suit it clearly doesn't need? This just raises more questions.

Wow, this is the dark. It didn't take long for the LEGO Spacemen to destroy the alien cultures and force their lifestyles upon the green guys. Sad.

@Murdoch17 said:
"For all those questioning the wheelchair: Jake Sully uses a wheelchair in the first Avatar film and the Lego sets based on it. So it's not with out precedent to have a wheelchair in space!"

But why park their space science lab right beside a gigantic crack in the ground (that looks like a deep crevice)? I mean, on the front of the box, the hovercraft-vehicle is parked literally two feet away from the crevice.

Do they just not like the wheelchair guy very much?

There's (space) plants inside the lab.

Cheaper Botanical Garden perhaps? (definitely with some effort)

@Zordboy said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"For all those questioning the wheelchair: Jake Sully uses a wheelchair in the first Avatar film and the Lego sets based on it. So it's not with out precedent to have a wheelchair in space!"

But why park their space science lab right beside a gigantic crack in the ground (that looks like a deep crevice)? I mean, on the front of the box, the hovercraft-vehicle is parked literally two feet away from the crevice.

Do they just not like the wheelchair guy very much?"

It's not nearly as serious as those asteroids about to smash the planet!!

Why isn't the blue astronaut wearing gloves?

@Yooha said:
"Why isn't the blue astronaut wearing gloves?"

They are. Those are gold gloves.

Has the air-lock some special functionality? I mean they really highlight it on the box art on the back. Or is it just to show that these builds are modular with other space sets? You can buy more pods and make it a city.

Is this the same wheelchair that we’ve gotten before by the way?

Have almost every set in the wave now including the base and launch pad so this will be a no brainer for me. Can't wait. Have really really liked this line so far. Also tempted by the friends rover as well. Might have to get that too even though that will produce a ton of rovers for my set up. But still love this Space theme a lot.

@RikTheVeggie said:
"60434 has aliens with no spacesuits or helmets walking outside, whilst 60439 has an alien with a suit but no helmet outside, and also suit and helmet outside.

Do we infer that the aliens are fine being exposed to the vacuum of space and don't need any assistance breathing, so any spacesuits or helmets are just to make the humans more comfortable - perhaps as the first step of a wider infiltration plot."

If there’s no atmosphere, it’s because gravity is too weak, or the planet is too close to the local star. In the latter case, everyone would be burnt to a crisp, so it wouldn’t really matter. If it’s just weak gravity, that wheelchair would be useless even inside the habitat.

However, if there is an atmosphere, but it’s not _our_ atmosphere, helmets would be required for survival (outside for us, inside for the aliens), but a wheelchair could potentially be usable. Inside, it would be challenging since habitats like these are often uncomfortably small for people without mobility issues, but they could potentially be made accessible enough to accommodate wheelchairs. Outside…unless the local sentient species has reached a point of paving roads and sidewalks, non-powered wheels would be a rough go. Since there’s a hover pad it can attach to, that would be a different story.

Realistically, I have excellent hearing, and full use of all my limbs, but I still probably would have failed the physical due to needing corrected vision. There are certainly a lot of Earth-based NASA jobs that I could have qualified for, but the bar to become an astronaut is incredibly high. The weight of a wheelchair likely exceeds the personal allowance for an individual astronaut, not to mention having to develop a single-use hover-contraption, figure out how to store it during launch, and factoring in the cost of hefting that into orbit. Easier by far to just stick to rigid physical restrictions on who gets into the program and who doesn’t. At least, in a real-world setting. For make-believe, throwing a wheelchair in there is pretty harmless, and a paraplegic aspiring astronaut may still choose to try for an earthbound NASA career.

@123MrBrick said:
" @kyrodes said:
" @ToysFromTheAttic said:
"Not sure how a wheelchair would work in zero gravity, but it's cool."

It's not zero gravity. It's a planet and it's fictional. We don't know if its gravity is greater or less than Earth's.

It's weird that nobody complains when sets have rovers with wheels, but it suddenly becomes a problem with wheelchair.

Same happened with hearing aids and cochlear implants. When Lego create hairpieces with headphones, ear protectors and headphone accessories, it's not a problem. When Lego put hearing aids and cochlear implants in minifigs suddenly appear people complaining that minifigs don't have ears."

It's a question of internal consistency for me. This subtheme has thrown realism out the window with aliens and the mech. Why not give this minifigure cybernetic legs, or even a hoverchair? I don't have a problem with including a disabled minifigure, but just throwing the regular wheelchair element in this set is hamfisted and unfitting."

@kyrodes Please, don't get me wrong: I LOVE THE FACT WE GET ALL KINDS OF DIFFERENT MINIFIGS.

A few years ago I specifically bought the wheelchair sports guy because he looked so brickin' awesome. And I don't even care about sports! So, I'm NOT complaining AT ALL about the diversity of minifigs, as punctuated by my use of the term COOL in my initial remark. Not sure how any of that could be misconstrued as complaining.

I'm also not trying to apply real-world logic or actual physics on a kid's toy, because then I'd better get rid off all my LEGO castles and vintage space sets. It's actually pretty neat you can attach the wheelchair to the (likewise unrealistic) flying device. Otherwise, it was just a little throwaway remark because I was wondering what adventures he could have on that clearly uncharted terrain.

@PurpleDave said:
"If there’s no atmosphere, it’s because gravity is too weak, or the planet is too close to the local star. In the latter case, everyone would be burnt to a crisp, so it wouldn’t really matter. If it’s just weak gravity, that wheelchair would be useless even inside the habitat."

Well, if we interpret the box art strictly, the fact that the sky is purplish (rather than black, like the sky as seen from Earth's moon) suggests there must be some kind of atmosphere. Presumably the alien flora has some impact on the composition of that atmosphere.

As for why an astronaut in a wheelchair would be approved for a deep space mission, my impression from most of the sets so far is that the orange-uniformed astronauts are engineers/technicians (specializing in construction, repair, and mining tasks), the blue-uniformed astronauts are pilots/explorers, and the green-uniformed astronauts are scientists. If that's correct… well, fiction is REPLETE with scientific geniuses who depend on wheelchairs for mobility — even some like X-Men's Professor X who were written YEARS before Stephen Hawking became a well-known real-life example of such.

It's not unimaginable that a futuristic deep-space mission like this might have a need for extraordinary knowledge in a highly specialized field, which might outweigh some of those present-day physical qualifications you bring up — particularly since the advanced spaceflight technology required for a crewed deep-space mission would not necessarily have all the same limitations of today's rockets.

And the hover-scooter is hardly a "single-use hover-contraption" — it's just a slightly modified version of the hoverbike another astronaut is shown using in 30663. Presumably, all that would be required to adapt it to wheelchair use is a simple conversion kit. A lot of this stuff might also be delivered to the planet in parts and assembled after arrival, just as the planetary base itself would need to be.

A lot of this is a moot point in the end because, as you mention, this is all make-believe. As long as it's straightforward enough for kids to understand and use in fun play scenarios, it doesn't matter what sort of technical or scientific advances would be needed to bring a wheelchair user to a distant planet in real life (especially since at present, the "distant planet" part of that equation is MUCH further beyond our current means than the "wheelchair" part).

@Aanchir:
If you have to remove a component, or add a component, and there’s no room to stow that component in transit, as soon as you leave that component behind it becomes a de facto single-use device. Like having a hardtop convertible where you have to leave the roof behind in your garage, and the weatherman got the forecast wrong.

But, yeah, I hadn’t been thinking in terms of the new color-coding. Certainly, TV shows have been known to cheat the rules (like every crime procedural where one single person does all the lab work and computer hacking).

Real world, we’re definitely not at the point of sending leading scientists to other planets. The Apollo missions didn’t even send a real scientist to the moon until the very last mission. Previously, they just trained astronauts to think like geologists, so they could bring back interesting stuff for the real scientists to study. But that option really only works if the crew actually plans to return at some point. Heck, if this is the result of a multi-generational space flight, your banking the entire success of the mission on being able to produce kids who are both willing and capable of being trained into these roles.

We also don’t know that this individual needed a wheelchair before being selected for this mission. Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead has an instance of an able-bodied scientist who becomes paralyzed during the course of the mission. The mind still worked, they had a limited pool of people who could fill certain roles, and there wasn’t really an option to hire a replacement from off-planet. It’s probably the most believable fictional account of a situation where something like this might happen, outside of a Star Trek scenario, where transporters solve all kinds of problems.

I love this set! So cheap and has 4x Canopy pieces. Can't wait to get 4 of these and make a huge space ship or base with them.

@PurplDave said: "It’s probably the most believable fictional account of a situation where something like this might happen, outside of a Star Trek scenario, where transporters solve all kinds of problems."
But they cause all sorts of problems, too. Among many other examples, Kirk (who got split into his aggressive and pacifistic halves), Riker (who got duplicated), Tuvok and Neelix (who got joined into one being) know what I'm talking about.

@TheOtherMike:
And they don't always solve easy problems (falling into an inconsiderately-located garden, or misplacing a letter from someone's name). On the other hand, they do sometimes solve easy problems (budget shortcomings meaning you can't afford to build the Captain's Launch film set).

Then again, Picard learned magic in the last film, so I think he can just teleport now.

Okay why doesn’t the handicapped astronaut have a hover-chair like Professor X? At the very least he should have some sort of all-terrain walker like Cyrus Borg.

I knew the little green guys would be intelligent! I’m guessing the suit gives them the ability to interact with human equipment - a lá Earthworm Jim’s ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit - and the helmet probably does double-duty, enabling them to survive inside the buildings in our atmosphere, and translating our language to theirs so they can work with the humans.

Gotta say, this is pretty cool.

Now that I think about it, the guy in the wheelchair should have an exoskeleton as part of the suit print, so he can get around as well as the other astronauts. If they can build the little green guys little power suits, why not the paraplegic guy?

@MutoidMan:
Unless you want to be plugging those unlicensed nuclear accelerators (or whatever they’re making out of the pearlple crystals) into the back of your hoverchair, you’re going to have to plug it in to recharge at some point. And that leaves you needing to be carried in an emergency (which is de rigueur for sci-fi stories). As long as there’s near-Earth gravity, the manual chair is less likely to become a liability in and around the habitat, and it’s the exploring where supplementary systems might be needed.

@PurpleDave
Heck yeah, plug in those unlicensed nuclear accelerators! It’s not as if the planet is paved; the guy travels who knows how many light years just so he can struggle and get frustrated trying to make his way across the ground? That’s not cool.

Maybe a wheelchair is fine for the lab, and I get that he’s got that wheelchair hover conversion (that cost $39,999.95) for doing distance, but he needs something in-between, and something that lets him get around once he’s reached his destination, regardless of the terrain. At least give the guy an exoskeleton (like what MCU Tony Stark built for Rhody after his accident in CA: Civil War) printed on his suit (they can print hearing aids on heads) and a backpack with one of those fusion cores. If they can power huge mobile bases, buildings, rovers, and space ships, they’d power an exoskeleton for weeks. The astronauts carry them with one hand, so they aren’t heavy at all. Now the guy isn’t stuck in a wheelchair while his fellow astronauts get to walk around.

Suppose the little green guys throw a big dance party? He could show them the robot!

@MutoidMan:
Ooh, we could give him Baron Vladamir Harkonnen's antigravity rig! It's not like he's using it anymore... (too soon?)

Astronaut in a wheel chair? This woke movement has gone too far. Try going to space with any space agency without thorough medical examination. I bet most of us won't qualify.

@Luka_Lobe said:
"Astronaut in a wheel chair? This woke movement has gone too far. Try going to space with any space agency without thorough medical examination. I bet most of us won't qualify.
"

I’m going to assume that the guy is all kinds of brilliant so they wanted him on-site where he could make science-y decisions in real-time, and aside from his paraplegia he’s perfectly healthy. Also, they must have lowered the cost-per-pound of launching into orbit to the point where it’s not impractical to send up people who require equipment to get around.

@PurpleDave said:
" @MutoidMan :
Ooh, we could give him Baron Vladamir Harkonnen's antigravity rig! It's not like he's using it anymore... (too soon?)"

Hehehe… nah, he might start forcing the little green guys to mine the mysterium crystals for him. Next thing you know, the little green guys will be manufacturing weirding modules and then paralyzed legs will be the least of his problems.

@MutoidMan said:
"Hehehe… nah, he might start forcing the little green guys to mine the mysterium crystals for him. Next thing you know, the little green guys will be manufacturing weirding modules and then paralyzed legs will be the least of his problems."

Weirding modules was two alternate realities ago. The current and previous ones did away with that.

@PurpleDave said:
"Weirding modules was two alternate realities ago. The current and previous ones did away with that."

So what? I like the weirding modules. Also, it’d be kind of tough for the little green guys to train in the Weirding Way what with just those three little tentacles for legs.