Like a little child again
If I was a little boy again instead of a middle-aged man, I don't think I'd built much more than the minifigs and maybe the robot, and left the rest for my father to build. It's been a few years since the last time I did that, and I don't think I t get to enjoy the "would you build this for me?" for much longer anymore
First pieces
The classic red-suited space lego person with the good old smiley face. I used to have a ridiculous amount of these people, in various colours. Now I had a couple, shiny and fresh. Words failed to describe how incredibly excited I was with this minifig. The robot was also fun, a traditional few-piece construct that still had character. Or maybe I was looking at all this through strong nostalgia-tinted glasses. It was a clear possibility.
Technic frame
Like I guess most of these "old kids" sets, the Explorer's core was formed from a healthy amount of Technic bits. There, in the middle, was the front landing gear's shock absorber set, while the funky frames in the sides fooled me. I had expected the main/side landing gear to be installed inside them, but nope, that wasn't it.
After the core the whole bottom was simply covered with grey plates. Only the landing gear pads and those centrally located repulsor engines brought some diversity. Not that this was going to be ogled at from below, anyway.
So far the top side had revealed nothing of how it was going to actually look or behave like.
Slowly, phase by phase the ship's interior started getting built. I was again very excited whenever I found some classic pieces that I hadn't seen elsewhere in decades.
While building the back end's inwards-turning edges the back ramp was a bit on the way. These angled things were a bit flimsy feeling at least at this point. Still, the feeling of progress was great now that the construction had moved on from the insides to the exterior details.
The nose with some, eh, antennae
Of course the spaceship's nose had an upscaled version of the classic forward-pointing double-antenna (or exhaust pipe, whatever role they had in builds) that never in the history of playtime were laser cannons or anything, oh no.
The ship's nose also got a good amount of greebling on it, this started reminding me of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Perhaps that came from the shape and grey colouring of the ship.
Wings all around
The back end had gotten the outer edges already nicely paneled, now the top surfaces got done, and the same paneling and greebling work continued around the sides of the craft. They ended up pretty neat, the greeblies hiding some panel lines and other crimes.
Internal fun
To the very rear of the science vessel, right above the hinged rear ramp, a smooth-surfaced flat black slab got inserted. The slab was freely floating in little tracks, just a couple of small pieces at the center of mass -end prevented it from freely falling out.
Well look at that, there were beds for two galactic explorers, they even allowed sleeping with the oxygen tanks on. While to of the crew worked or otherwise scienced around, the other two could enjoy a resting shift.
Here were more of my old favourite pieces. I didn't remember how many different robots I built with various mailboxes were acting as their head, claw-arms or both.
Computers!
And again I got very excited seeing familiar faces. Oh, if I only had these flat 2x2 versions of the basic displays back in the day, my spaceships, vehicles and bases would've been so much more elegant.
Was the rightmost display running Asteroids? The view also let us believe that maybe the double antennas or pitot tubes in the nose were a degree or two more aggressive than in the eighties. That small 2x1 plate was one of those that I had a healthy pile of, as they were heavily used in Blacktron II sets (and M-Trons and I guess also in Ice Planet 2002).
Aaaaah the Space Lego logo! This flat 2x4 plate was much more convenient and multiuseable than the old 3x6 slopes but... I'd accepted one or two of those too.
That computer panel set from a few photos above ended up as the cockpit's main dashboard, maybe quite naturally as the other main panel had a tactical view on it. I liked the horizontal display between the pilots, with the status of the ship on it. Double thumbs-up for that.
At this point also the non-pilots had their seating set up, in case they weren't always sleeping while off-duty, or something. Polite.
Airlocking
To make the sciencing (and resting) easier the ship had a Star Trek -like sliding airlock door. Because the whole interior of the ship was designed to be sloping towards the front, this wall section had to be angled similarly.
The crew compartment got a couple of computer stations with joysticks to adjust who knew what. In the same pass the upper edges were prepared for the yellow canopies.
The necessary three-directional adjustment thrusters were now, instead of being bulky single pieces, constructed from pieces and funnily the rocket nozzles were made out of buckets. Yeah, they were more impressive this way, there was no denying it.
The cargo doors and the general rear end
Behind the crew compartment the remaining space needed walls, so large L-shaped walls/doors were built. I found the white arrows that were built out of bits pretty cool (and fun) as opposed to just using stickers.
Galactic Explorer's rear spoiler was humongous, and it got even more cosmic when both halves were together. I almost built these two pieces in parallel, but I thought I'd make some silly mistakes so I followed the instructions instead.
Engines
Those side-mounted attitude thrusters weren't enough to propel this vessel anywhere in space or various athmospheres, more power was needed. Two huge nozzles were bolted into the backs of the cargo doors.
Maybe, or hopefully, I wasn't the only one who got some flashbacks to the almost quarter of a century -old Phantom Menace and its podracing scene from these extra engines. If you set these in front of a small tub and connected them with some cables, you could definitely see these swooshing by on the Mos Espa's racetrack :p
Instead of being foolish I installed the extra engines onto the wings of the science vessel. These photos also showed that the Project Assistant II had set the white-suited scientists to do some weird excercices from the handlebars.
These were much more impressive than the mostly hidden main engines.
A space rover
With the spaceship completed, all that was left was the tiny moon car, or rover. It was simple but very functional. Just look at how happy the driver was!
