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On May 7, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became then first American in space. Flying the Mercury capsule "Freedom 7", he reached an altitude of 187.5km on his 15 minute sub-orbital flight. This particular model is in scale with the recent Lego Ideas 21309 Saturn V/Apollo rocket. I’ve taken the scale from the Apollo command module, assuming 1 stud = 1m. Sadly, at this small size (just 2 studs across), it isn't possible to recreate the United States logo down the side of the rocket, or the distinctive black-and-white stripes in the aft section. If anyone has advice on getting custom prints done, I'd certainly be interested. I was nearly going to use the traditional Lego rocket fin for the tail of the ship, but I decided to try and recreate the black and white patterning on the engine block using some robot arms: I'm a little concerned about my use of a 3.18mm bar in the technic axle holes to hold the base of the rocket together, as it's an unusual technique that (I think) may be damaging to the 2x2 round bricks and plates. That said, it has been used in a few Lego sets so I'm confident it is at least "legal". The model features a display stand, based on the actual launchpad of the Mercury-Redstone: The Mercury-Redstone comes with a separate Mercury capsule on its own display stand - this version includes a 1x1 round plate on the base to represent the retro-rocket pack. This was a small engine that fired to bring Freedom 7 down to Earth on a good trajectory, but unfortunately there isn't the space to include it on the rocket stack. The Mercury capsule was topped by a 4.8m red escape tower, which would propel the capsule up and away from an exploding booster. While never used on manned flights (fortunately), it saw incredibly frequent use during the early testing of rockets! A nanofigure astronaut is included for scale… and yes, Mercury really was that tiny!! This is a digital MOC and hasn't been tested in real life. An older version has appeared on mecabricks, but this one has been updated to use parts that actually exist. Comments and criticism are always appreciated!
