Lego Space Shuttle Launched Into Space

On December 31, 2011, Raul Oiada, a Romanian physicist and self-taught rocket scientist (who taught himself English so he could read the books to teach himself rocketry) and Steve Sammartino, an Australian entrepreneur, launched a Lego Space Shuttle into space from Germany.

The project came out of some bigger plans that Raul has, but Steve convinced him to start smaller. The whole project cost about $1,000, which Steve pointed out to me was so much cheaper than the cost of a similar exercise only 10 years ago. He said:

The rig was really cheap – less than $1,000. Which 10 years ago might have been$ 100,000 (Including GPS trackers, HD camera capable of surviving space conditions et al. Add to this that without the web (Skype, Paypal, Youtube, GoPro, cheap GPS) none of this could have happened, and it is a great story about the world coming together and technology being a bridge to democracy and collaboration. Like minds living worlds apart finding complementary skills – this is the kind of world I want to live in. Read More