LEGO Shuttle Expedition 10231

Well, I bought this because I loved Legos as a kid & have been sick and grumpy all week. I wasas excited as Christmas morning when I opened it up on Saturday morning; the box was huge,bigger than it looked in the Lego store at the mall. Inside the pieces were distributed betweena large number of stiff, crinkly clear plastic bags. I dumped a few of the smaller bags into somebins (I'm way more organized than when I was little), left the larger bags closed until I neededsomething out of them, and started building.Hours passed. This set has probably three times the pieces of the most complex set I'd built before,something like the Blacktron Alpha Centauri Outpost, and nearly five times the pieces of my favoriteset of all time, the amazing Blacktron Aerial Intruder. Saturday ended and I was halfway done!The next morning I finished the orbiter, external tank, and baseplate/stand. My older sister built theSpace Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, and then we assembled the components into the launch stack.It was a lot more work than I expected, several evenings' worth for a patient teenager who alsohas homework and such. The finished product is beautiful and, well, accurate enough to the realshuttle. It's a satisfying build, and though I expect a few bits and pieces will break off if I ever tryto play with it (particularly the somewhat flimsy vertical tail), hunting down scattered pieces andreattaching them is part of the fun.Just like the real space shuttles, this model isn't headed into orbit. I work in a physics department,and I intend to display it in my office to show my love of space travel, space technology, and thecomplex and ambitous story of human attempts to engineer reusable things.

I've built LEGOs for the last 20 years of my life and this is by-far one of the best construction sets out there. When I was little I dreamt about owning the Lego Space Shuttle, and after reading some of the reviews on this particular set (compared with the 10213), and I agree that this is even better than that one (more accurate and some cool features). From the moment I opened the Amazon box, I was stunned...the packaging is huge and very pretty. ;) All of the bags are the standard lego bags, and the instructions are in two packets. Also, the stickers are pretty detailed as well.I will say that Amazon had an amazing deal on several lego sets including this one, and I've never received a brand new lego set where each block was about $0.05 each (I paid $78.00 for this one). Since I was still looking to buy this over the last couple of weeks, the drop in price from $99.99 to $78.00 just made me commit faster.Overall, I think this is a bargain set and perfect for any one over 12+ and will go great in any Lego set now and in the many years to come!

I am 31 years old now, and loved putting LEGO sets together as a kid. I recently became interested in LEGO again, and thought this set, the Shuttle Expedition (10231), would be a good challenge that would take some time to put together. So after receiving this set, I sat down on the floor and spread all the pieces out, making sure to organize them by color. I start putting the set together and after about an hour and a half I realize that there are no white 2x1 flat/smooth pieces (there should have been 13 of them, so there's no chance that I happened to drop them all).I had never had this happen before, and my dad, who was visiting for the week, didn't believe me. We both combed back through all 1230 pieces, and I even took everything apart to make sure that I hadn't accidentally used them already. I figured it was a fluke, so I went online to LEGO's site, filled out the online form, and a little over a week later the missing pieces arrived. No problem - it was a pretty easy process and I was willing to shrug it off.So...Last night I sit down to put it together again, and about 1/3 of the way in I realized that it was also missing all six of the white 1x1 pieces! Geez...at this point, I realized that I had become somewhat frustrated.I called LEGO and spoke with a customer service representative, and his only solution was to get the part number and send me out another round of replacement pieces. He also suggested that I go back through and inventory all 1230 pieces. I have no complaints about the customer service; the guy I spoke with on the phone was just doing his job, but at this point I'm afraid that I am going to get several more steps in and realize that I'm missing more pieces. Either I go through and inventory the pieces and call in a replacement order or I take a chance and run the risk of starting the whole process over.What a hassle. I'm sure it is rare to be missing pieces, but I'm sort of starting to lose faith in the company I loved so much as a kid. As you can probably tell, I am a little bit discouraged.The bottom line? This isn't fun any more.

Will become a collector set. Get it while you can. That is, if you aren't too late.A great set for display. From a distance it doesn't look like a LEGO set.This set replaces the previous LEGO shuttle set 10213, because the prior set has some stability issues. This set is almost identical to the earlier set. It just has some additional braces, etc. And, the engines are a bit different.Will take about 10-12 hours to build, based on how quickly you build LEGOS. There are 2 instruction books. The build is pretty fun. Building the two holding tanks is a bit redundant, but overall the build is great. Especially when you think about building a piece of history. It's not a difficult build, not like a Technic setThe shuttle program has been retired. Having this set is a great way to continue the memory. It is very realistic, has opening bay doors and some astronauts, one male, one female. Unfortunately, they aren't too scale with the shuttle. But, to make the shuttle to scale with a minifig it would have been too big, in my opinion.