Slashdot Mirror
The Star Wars Alphabet Project
An anonymous reader writes "A ship for every *other* letter in the alphabet. Jon Palmer is creating a Star Wars fighter out of LEGO for every letter in the alphabet (minus X,Y,B,A,E and V). He has about 5 to go. Check out the project on From Bricks to Bothans." I have to admit, some of these look even cooler than the ships created for the newer Star Wars movies.
How long before a font set will come out with the fighter characters? That would be quite nice!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Looks like he gave up without even trying on that one....
When you're 40, and all you do every day is build lego starwars ships... you really have to step back, and take a long hard look at your life.
Also, try this one.
The X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings and B-Wings can be seen in the movies, so "official" designs exist already. The E-Wing is found in the comics, and I think the V-Wing is also somewhere in the expanded universe, so it exists in a "semi-official" way. So they designed ships for the rest of the alphabet.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
IIRC, the V Wing was in one of the computer games from Lucas Arts, "Rogue Squadron", and also cropped up in some of the books as well. One quick Google later and it would appear that there are also K-Wings, T-Wings and W-Wings already as well according to this page.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
...this!
Sorry for acting like an old fart, but wasn't Lego more fun when there was a limited number of different pieces in a limited number of colors? Nowadays, the sets consist of like three large custom-made painted pieces that you put together in ten seconds. The point of Lego is that you can build anything from a few simple parts.
Sadly enough, I posted that entirely from memory.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
He is going to create Imperial fighters for ever piece of formal wear except bow ties...
That's probably because there are (currently) only 5 Star Wars movies (plus one Christmas Special which I haven't seen yet), yet there are something like 10 Star Trek movies (I can't be bothered to actually count), 5 Star Trek live-action series and a Star Trek animated series (I'm not counting the Endor series of Star Wars spinoffs, coz that would be silly).
The Star Wars fans have much less material to go by, so they have to concentrate their efforts into those outlets. Hence every line is important to them, because it is one of a limited edition of lines in the Star Wars franchise. The Star Trek fans learn Klingon instead.
We Build Beautiful Websites
Because when these dogfight it looks cool. When these dogfight, it looks like squid fucking.
It seems to be missing a few letters, namely å, ä and ö :(
/me ducks
Well that's hardly difficult seeing as they sucked ass. X wings and TIE fighters on the other hand looked like they actually had someone engage their brain before making them.
The basic lego bricks may be ideal for very young children, but once you hit 6 or 7 you get very frustrated by the fact that there are no fighter canopies/big wheels/flexible hoses etc. Fortunately, in my case that was exactly when Lego started to produce more of these parts (I had a spiffy train set with quite a few specialized parts). The "old" parts were still useful of course, it's all about balance.
I agree that they have gone a tad overboard on the specialized parts in recent years, but the Star Wars line actually uses a lot of the old basic bricks, simply because they're needed to replicate the arbitrary shapes of the SW universe vehicles. I bought several SW Lego sets and they're loaded with great simple parts.
Freedom: "I won't!"
And have them blow stuff up (imaginatively, of course).
Ah, to be a child again...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Ask a Star Wars fan about how Han Solo made a voyage in however many parsecs and prepare to boggle at the convoluted thought process behind the explanation.
... an explaination that happens to be true.
I am not a Star Wars fan at all (though I used to be a casual enjoyer of the movies, before episodes I and II), but this point isn't as convulated or silly as you may think.
Remember Einstein's equation: e=m (more commonly known as e=mc^2)? You can drop the c^2 if you chose your units to be such that c=1, meaning that the speed of light is little more than a constant that converts between two sets of units that essentially measure the same thing. Indeed, physcicists have proposed that we adopt more natural units that clarify this relationship.
Distance and time are likewise the same thing (as becomes apparent when dealing with general relativity).
You could measure time in units that describe how far light travels in a given period of time. While saying "just give me 300,000 kilometers, I'll be right with you" is a little more verbose the "just give me a second," the two are, in terms of physics, identical. Alternatively, you could say something is about a nanosecond distant, i.e. that object is one light-nanosecond away from your current position.
The fact that we didn't understand the relationships between space and time, nor that between energy and mass, is why we've ended up with two essentially incompatible units for each (meters vs. seconds, grams vs. Joules) which make the e=m relationship, and the distance vs. time relationship, appear more complex than they actually are.
So, saying one made a trip in x parsecs (which is silly sounding and undoubtably resulted from George Lucas not knowing a thing about physics or the units he was tossing about) isn't really as silly as one would think.
What is silly is that we still have different units for distance vs. time, and mass vs. energy, when in each case they are one and the same.
There, now you've read a 'convuluted' explaination by someone who hates what Star Wars has become and was never a very ardent fan
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The S-Wing is a deliberate homage to the origin of Legos in Space-the first Classic Space sets released, back in the late '70s. The S-Wing is a deliberate re-make of the 918 .Space.
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/918_1
One of the most famous sets ever made, the 918 was one of the original three classic spaceships released by Lego. Jon did not "give up", he built a deliberate homage to the Holy Grail of
http://news.lugnet.com/space/
Space. Forever!
The requirement of being "space worthy" does not itself add any shape requirements to a spaceship. Many sci-fi spaceships are spheres, for maximum bang-for-the-buck surface area/enclosed volume ratio. Also due to limitations on materials. One of Vernor Vinges spacecraft described in Marooned In Realtime, for instance, was an assemblage of spheres, not even physically connected to each other (impossible due to other technological considerations).
But Star Wars spacecraft aren't traditional spacecraft. The ones we see are typically combat craft, and that adds several concerns into the mix:
- Mounting space: There must be space to mount weapons platforms, such as missles, turbolasers, ion cannons, and other things. A Spherical design is actually a little too efficient with the surface area in this case; you probably need more room then a Sphere would have left over, plus you'd be challenged to get spacing and angling right.
- Reduced silhouette: You want to be able to present a reduced silhouette to the enemy, so you can be harder to hit. This means that there is some other angle with an increased silhouette, but the tradeoff is worthwhile, if you have an intelligent pilot. Again, a Sphere, or a random misshapen lump of metal, does not meet this criterion, and this strongly indicates a traditional aircraft-type design, with a limited number of thin protrusions and as small a main body as possible. (Of course this doesn't indicate exactly an aircraft; the B-Wing fits this just fine.)
- Manueverability: You need to be manueverable. Whether you have air-like physics as in Star Wars, or real Newtonian physics in space, that indicates being able to turn quickly and focusing the thrust elsewhere. Again, random lumps of metal don't do this well. This forces a relatively short axis on the thrust line, so you don't get too much rotational inertia, again limiting your freedom of design.
Add this all up and you aren't free to throw hunks of metal together.Most of the designs on that page aren't too bad, and thrust coming from off-axis is regrettably already established in Star Wars (B-Wings in particular look really wrong to me, the engines should be about 25% lower, unless the lower spike is entirely hollow, in which case it should not exist for other good reasons). Star Wars has already established high levels of technology, such that while we'd never build those ships, they make OK sense in that universe.
Once you have these limited protrusions, you might as well go ahead and make them wing-like. All Star Wars craft have enough power that true wings are not necessary, in the sense of providing lift, but they can still provide valuable manueverability by acting as control surfaces in atmosphere. Also, since drag rises quite quickly, you still want to limit drag in a craft that will spend significant time in an atmosphere, as many, if not all, craft in Star Wars do. Again, "misshapen hunk of metal", while spaceworthy, doesn't help you here.
All in all, while Star Wars craft are fanciful and deliberately made for aesthetic effect, they aren't too badly done, and harsh criticism of them, once you accept the aircraft-maneuverability "physics" of Star Wars, really isn't too justified. (Criticism of the physics is, but you have to at least admit they knew they were wrong and they were deliberately imitating WWII dogfights, which mitigates it a little; I find deliberate violation less annoying then accidental violation.)