First picture of next Ideas set: the ISS

Would have been a day one buy if it had recognizable minifigures. Not a fan of microscale sets. I do think the designer did a good job though. Might buy it on sale.

I like it. Honestly, I'll be surprised if it costs more than $100 as it doesn't look that big or complex.

@Unikittius said:
"As a casual fan of space exploration, I like it! After looking at the picture, I am hoping it will be sold for under $50."

It looks more like $70.

Really looking forward to this!

Looks interesting!

Just curious about how one will display this set. Not a huge fan but am a fan of LEGO Ideas so will likely pick it up at some point.

@Lordmoral said: "I may get this depending how many Star Destroyers I can place there as if it's just a refuelling station."

LOL that's actually a great idea!

I'm totally buying this set. Looks really great.

@SeekerBear said:
" @Lordmoral said: "I may get this depending how many Star Destroyers I can place there as if it's just a refuelling station."

LOL that's actually a great idea!

I'm totally buying this set. Looks really great."

Obviously I am referring to micro ships as well, a full sized one will be unrealistic.

I like it. It ain't no Saturn V or Lunar Lander but it looks OK. The Lunar Lander was £85 and this looks much more slight than that. At £50 you might just get me, any more than that, well...........

I like it, certainly a step up from the old Discovery one I had as a kid. The modules all seem to be in their right spots, I can recognize quite a few of them. I really like how they did the Japanese science lab with the outside platform too.

I am trying to ID the capsules in the photos though... One is obviously the Space Shuttle. The one approaching the rear near the Russian Orbital Segment... is that supposed to be a Soyuz? If so, I am not a fan of how that looks since it kind of not really realistic to the Soyuz design. Maybe its supposed to be a Northrup Grumman Cygnus or a European ATV vehicle though. The one towards the bottom right under the main truss/solar panel array looks to be like its supposed to be a stand-in for a SpaceX Crew Dragon or a Boeing Starliner. If it is supposed to be a Crew Dragon that will be interesting... SpaceX is very protective of their brand and if they have allowed Lego to use the Crew Dragon name it might be a hint that Lego has obtained the license from them. Boeing has worked with Lego before and doesn't seem to be as strict as SpaceX in regard with their brand protection though, so I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be a Starliner.

I actually thought they would scale it up a bit. Never been a fan of micro-scale. It seems like it will look too small next to the Saturn V. It would be very cool if it actually had interior, which I think is much interesting than it's simple shape. Now here is what I'm afraid could happen. This set will suck sales-wise because it is not exciting for children and a bit lackluster for adults. After that Lego will conclude that their strategy of not coming back to the internal Space theme is correct because apparently, people are losing interest in space. :) I am a bit disappointed with this set to be honest. But I will get it anyway because I want space-themed sets to be made. For me Ideas is the only channel to get castle, space and pirates, and I think that there is not enough of these among all the licensed sets.

I just realized, you can see Canada Arm 2 on the truss above the US orbital segment; looks like it can be moved around as a play feature.

Never really cared for this and I wasn’t expecting it to win the vote ( I went for Yellow) considering we have a lot of NASA or other real space stuff.

It looks good enough to make me think about it, but I’ll wait for the price and better pictures first.

Is that an adorable micro version of Hubble in the top right?!?

As much as I love NASA or realistic space theme sets, idk how I feel about this one... The build seems quite... simplistic or too blocky in a way?.. Idk the actual ISS to me looks more cylindrical with narrowing sections in various places. Besides that, I think I will get this if the price isn't ridiculous, which I'm expecting to be a good deal since the Friends and the Fossils sets were nicely priced.

Wow! This set looks great!

Not sure about minifigures, but there's a nanofigure doing a spacewalk center-left near the gray module at the bottom-center of the station and one standing on top of the center of the station.

look to be the same nanofigures as included in the Saturn V Ideas set.

Really, really hope all those solar panels are prints - not looking forward at all to having to deal with that many stickers.

I like it but probably won't buy it... nice idea & well constructed, the space ones usually are & its probably gonna about £80 RRP!!

According to promobricks.de and stonewars.de the price in Germany is to be € 69.99 .

Shuttle build looks like the same one from the ‘Women of NASA’ set. Pretty sure those tiles are the same as the two on Hubble telescope in the same set too so should be printed. However, all those prints will push the price of the set up surely?

I think it looks great! But as others said surely hope (demand?) that the panels are printed. Not sure whether it'll be the most entertaining build ever, but as a display piece this seems rather neat.

Like this very much. Will depend on the price though whether I am going to buy this or not.
My New Year's resolution this year was not to buy more than one LEGO set per month, and I am definitely going to stand by it. This otoh means that I have to be really picky about what I am going to add to my collection in 2020. Will see how it turns out in the end.

It looks a little squarer than I expected, but realistically I'm going to buy this. I lied to myself about the lunar lander an it's on my shelf anyway.

@ggj:
So...be independently wealthy, and have a spare barn where you can build?

@mr_skinny:
The 1x4 solar panel tiles were first introduced in 2017's Women of NASA, but they're currently still in use with some of the City Space sets, so they should be cheaper to work into a new set than if they were out of production at the moment. The other solar panel tiles (I'm thinking 1x3 because I can see panels with three rows on the section that sticks out perpendicularly from the main trunk) would be a brand new print. However, look at Women of NASA. It's 215pcs with four minifigs. It came with seven new prints on basic parts (with only the solar panel tile ever being repeated), and the four minifigs featured four unique torso prints, three unique head prints (Sally Ride is actually FB's Tina Goldstein in disguise), and one unique leg print (can't tell if they're dual-molded or not). The set still only cost $25, which considering all of those printed parts and minifigs seems perfectly reasonable (DC and Marvel have had a _ton_ of sets that retailed for $20 with comparable piece counts but one less minifig). So, if I'm right about the panels being 1x3 and 1x4, I can identify 148 printed solar panel tiles, plus the two printed trophy figs, that would be required to build just the main model as seen in this image. That's a ton of printed elements, but given that there are only three different elements involved you get a significant economy of scale. If you figure $0.10/pc, this probably won't be more than $5-10 higher than what you'd expect.

@AustinPowers:
That seems like a terrible New Year's resolution...unless you're allowed to buy really expensive sets that you can trade for large quantities of other sets.

Microscale isn't my kind of set, but understandable to be a display piece of the actual ISS.

There's always the 2019 City Space Station set to get a taste of minifig space-habitation.

Ideas + Space?

Double thumbs up - love it!!!

Looks great! I'm glad we finally get a proper ISS set, all those years after it first appeared one was coming in the City Space line. And is it just me, or have they include Starliner completely missing the ISS in the bottom right?!!

Pretty cool.

Wonder if this scales well with the Old Trafford stadium?

I'm almost certain the solar panels are printed. They look like they're all made up of the 1x4 tile that was introduced for Women of NASA, and a new 1x3 with matching pattern.

Meh. Any update on The Pirate Bay, the winner of the Ideas vote for the back half of 2019? That's the one I want to see. Hope Lego does it justice.

I adore Space themed sets, but I agree that they shouldn't be part of Ideas, to make room for more original concepts. This looks like a worthy purchase but not as urgent as either of the wonderful Apollo 11 sets.

@ChocolateCrisps I bet Boeing wished Starliner got as close to the ISS as the capsule is in the Lego set! :P

My wallet (and my wife) will be happy. Straight pass for me.

Can't wait to see the pirate bay, now that is an original set!

And here i was waiting for release news on the Pirate Bay set

Connected with ISS, yesterday I watch for the first time movie Life from 2017, scary D:

I think it's better if Lego goes for variety with Ideas sets, we've gotten a handful of space themed ones and while they were well made (especially Saturn V) I think it'll be better for the line to aim for a wider variety of themes.

I'm really looking forward to the Pirate Bay one.

@PurpleDave said:

@AustinPowers:
That seems like a terrible New Year's resolution...unless you're allowed to buy really expensive sets that you can trade for large quantities of other sets."

Actually, considering how many sets (from small to huge) I have bought over the last few years, taking a little step back seems like a wise decision. It has really gotten out of hand as of late.

It looks a little bit like the fan design (unlike some other recent Ideas sets) it has fewer technic holes showing but looks like a nice space set.

As a huge space geek, I am super excited for this set! I'll be in Berlin at the time of release, so I plan to make my way to the event.

This set is supposedly supposed to come end of January/February 1st. There is also a Creator Expert set coming reportely the same date. The "Old Trafford" creator expert has leaked itself online, Google it, (you may have to translate the german.) to you football and soccer geeks.

It's a nice design, but doesn't appear (for now) to be quite up to the Saturn V / LM standard for me. (Personally, I think the designer's larger version would have been the better choice....)

The ISS is BIG.... if you scaled it to the same 1:110 level as the Saturn, the station would be (along the truss) as wide as the Saturn is tall, and about 2/3rds as long in the other axis. That's probably impractical for a Lego set -- I'd guess it would be difficult to engineer a narrow beam truss that would hold the weight of the solar panels without creating custom long bricks, and we're probably talking about at least a 2000-3000 brick set at that scale. (I saw a builder post a custom ISS build on Reddit at a 1:90 scale; it took 5200 bricks and required a dedicated pedestal stand for almost every module. It was a thing of beauty, though.)

My ultimate dream would be separate detailed sets for each individual ISS element, which can be combined to form the full station. I will not hold my breath waiting for that, though.

Having said all that -- will I be jumping at this set when it's release? Heck yes.

To many space ideas sets not a fan of them at all

@thatStructVector:
Certain diameters (2, 4, 6, 8) are super easy to achieve, but very tough to work with because they don't leave (m)any connection points to build off of. Other diameters are very tough to achieve, but allow many connection points because their construction is so complex. Mixing diameters to represent larger and smaller sections of the ISS complicates all of this. In this case, they're pushing the lower limit of aesthetics, but probably the upper limits in terms of what is physically possible to display without a lot of supports to hold up the spindly bits.

@darkstonegrey said:
"Not sure about minifigures, but there's a nanofigure doing a spacewalk center-left near the gray module at the bottom-center of the station..."

Major Tom!

@ChocolateCrisps:
They've also got a Space Shuttle (makes sense) and some sort of satellite (not so much). The Space Shuttles were used both to service the ISS and deploy/repair/upgrade/recover satellites, but, that I'm aware of, never in the same mission. The ISS would have been purposefully located in an empty orbit to minimize the chances of collision, so it would be easier to just launch two missions than to try to accomplish both with a single launch. Most likely they just cluttered up the image with other space-related stuff to fill the dead space.

@yacoub:
The update is that it's a much larger model, and accordingly will probably take a much longer time to finalize the design, particularly when it comes to what elements will be available when it goes into production. This isn't the first time we've seen an Ideas set skip ahead in line. Exo-Suit was approved in October 2013, but didn't get released until August 2014 because there were significant design challenges. Ecto-1, on the other hand, was approved January 2014 and almost immediately unveiled with a June 2014 release date because one of the designers had already been working on it when it went into review.

@sbpyrat:
Indeed. If anyone is offended that this was picked to be released as an Ideas set, convince all the AFOLs to vote for something else next time.

What’s with all the hate for space-related Ideas sets? There’s only been 5 in total (6 if you count Women of NASA, but that’s more a minifig pack than a set), and each of them are VASTLY different from each other:

Hayabusa, a Satellite

Curiosity, a Rover

Exo-Suit, a Mech

Saturn V, a Rocket

ISS, a Space Station

Women of NASA, a Minifig Pack

The only two that are even remotely similar are Hayabusa and the ISS, but even then there’s obviously massive difference between the two, as well as an 8 year difference between their releases.

@MrBob:
They also complain about any TV show that pops up (currently six have been released with a seventh having been approved but not unveiled yet), or any popular movies (five of those, plus a sixth if you count Steamboat Willie). They complain when something truly original gets approved because it's just not something that fits their range of interests. They complain when something that fits any of these categories _doesn't_ get approved, because it _is_ something that they're interested in. They complain when something that is clearly listed on the Banned/Restricted list of themes gets turned down because they think that, in spite of the fact that 33 sets have been approved over the life of the theme, the whole thing is just a scam to steal concepts and release them as sets without paying the project submitters a measly 1% royalty on all copies sold.

I'm pretty sure that if there's a complete list of 4Chan "rules", there's one on there that if a thing exists, the internet must hate it.

I'm somewhat over the Space themed sets - I feel like Lego is flogging a dead horse here. I will be looking at this long and hard (i.e. months worth of time) before I remotely consider purchasing this. It will have to really impress me to buy a set from a theme that is starting to bore me now. There are so many things Lego could make - why always so repetitive?