LEGO Build Report: International Space Station

I asked Twitter which LEGO set I should build next during my spouse’s February work weekend. The overwhelming winner was the Space Shuttle Discovery, a set that clocks in at over 2,000 pieces. That’s definitely a 2-day build. Unfortunately, I lost all of Saturday to boring grown-up stuff, so I substituted the International Space Station for the winning set on Sunday. It’s not necessarily a smaller set, but it has significantly fewer pieces and was easily completed in a few hours (specifically, three episodes of Murderville and three episodes of The Great British Baking Show). Overall, the perfect way to spend a snow day.

International Space Station (21321) — 864 pieces

First up were the peripheral pieces, including satellites, a miniature space shuttle, and two astronaut microfigures.

Next came the stand for the set. I don’t usually like including the “official” stand because it is often too fragile to support the main build and/or looks clunky next to the rest of the set. In this case, the stand looked lovely and is actually necessary to support the finished product.

The core of the station is the logical first step in construction.

And the rest of the steps involved adding various extensions and solar panels to that core. Because this is a set from the Ideas collection, all the graphics are nicely printed instead of stickers I had to battle.

And with the addition of the major solar panel banks, this set is complete! Another reason to love this included stand is how nicely it features the peripherals.