One big, bad mother

Explorien Colony Ship

Thomas Grassmann and his son Sebastian have come up with one of the most plausible (and plausibly scaled) giant spaceships I’ve seen. Their Explorien Colony Ship can carry an entire pre-fabricated colony to a distant world. With a detailed interior and all the mod-cons this beast is certainly no lightweight. The best way to see it would definitely be in person but a perusal of the various folders should give some idea of the size and detail.

And if you’ve ever wondered how to take a photo of something this big, wonder no more. You use a tarpaulin.

Edit: I blame a headcold for making me forget to a) credit Marco Tagliaterri for pointing this out to me and b) Not linking to Thomas’ post (in German) at 1000steine

24 comments on “One big, bad mother

  1. Benjamin P.

    Jaw-dropping.
    And there’s so much in this! Parts use, for one; I see some Bionicle.
    And for two: is that a moonbase entrance on the side, near the front? This thing can dock! (Oh, wait, I see the picture with the cat. Yes it can!)

  2. legovaughan

    oH Baby!! THIS is the sort of thing I always dreamed of building when I was a kid – to see something of this magnitude in real life is just as captivating!

  3. Mark Kelso

    This is the type of scale I can only DREAM of working in! Some nice building techniques to begin with, but just epic (and this is a MOC really deserving of the term) for visual details and playability…it’s kind of a space themed SHIP-version of the massive town layouts we see at the Cons. AMAZING!!!

  4. RocketRalf

    I’m speechless. I’d die of starvation playing with that thing. I mean, I’d rather die than part with it :P

  5. Brad

    Incredible! My hat is off to the builders–they did quite a job! I’m still browsing the pictures–a rather excellent thing to do on a lazy Friday at work–but I am just gob-smacked. I would love to be able to look at this up close.

    “Look at the size of it!”

  6. Lich Barrister

    “Cut the chatter, Red Two.”

    Wow, though. Just astonishing – the pics indicate just how much forethought and planning had to have been done. Beautiful.

  7. Pingback: Massive LEGO Colonial Ship | Student Tech News

  8. Andrew Anderson

    This is one of the most amazing creations I have ever seen!!! The detail is fantastic. I’d love to see a Castle town in this kind of scale, that would be awesome!

  9. Tagl

    Thank you Tim for presenting this to a wider public. That was my intention when I sent you the mail.

    For those not that good in german, I’d like to translate Thomas’ post:

    Hello L(oved) L(EGO) L(overs),
    after a building time of 11 month the Space Factory Lichtenfels (annotation: the Grassmann’s hometown) we have finished the Exploriens spaceship. Just in time for the “5 space ships in september”.

    It’s completely furnished an playable – partially the compartments, roofs and so on are (re)moveable.
    Some may eventually know a smaller version from Bricking Bavaria 08.

    The hull was built between october 2007 and march 2008. From march to september we built the furniture and some modifications.
    Building the interior was a bit tricky as we had to remove the panel walls (BL: 30246) we had added before the BB 08.

    The captain (female) and the first officer show you round the ship.
    <pic)
    The originally planned colonyship has finaly become a multifunctional ship. It consits of 4 modules. The middle ones can be exchanged or removed. So it is possible to fly the front module with the dinghys alone.
    The crew is the captain and 11 crewmen. Every crewmember has a cabin on his own. If used as colonyship it is possible to carry the double amount of persons. The cabins have to be shared then.

    Mostly this type of ship is used as colony ship. In this case it’s able to transport a complete research station to the destination planet. After deployment of the station it can be completely or partially be coupled to the station.

    The hardest part was the transportation module for the base. Originally we had planned 5 modules to integrate the base into the ship. But this diddn’t look good in the end. So we desided to build the final transport modul.

    It took days of trial to find a suitable solution for the main drives.

    When the station was established it got visited by a strange life form. But it seemed to be friendly…

    Three pics of the interior
    Bridge, medical station, main reactor.

    have fun
    Thomas and Sebastian

    Here you can find more pics with english comments:
    http://festum.de/1000steine/myimages/album766

  10. Thomas (shadow020498)

    Hi All,
    nice to see that you like our ship, thank you for your nice comments.
    We’re proud to be on this amazing site with our moc.
    Thanks to Marco for his translation!

    greetings,
    Thomas Sebastian

    ( Excuse my bad English ^^ )

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