http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/3-lego-minifigs-flying-to-jupiter-on-nasas-juno-spacecraft-04-08-2011/

Lego made lightweight aluminum mini-figures of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and the discoverer of the planet's Galilean moons, Galileo, which were sent with the Juno space probe to Jupiter last week. I don't know about you guys, but I am totally buying these figures when copies are released to the public.

What a great use of $15,000...

I agree with merth, $15,000 is totally worth it!

haha, the probe itself probably cost a hell lot more than the lego peices, I I doubt an extra $15,000 is really much of an impact.

Hopefully when those specific lego models come out for the public (if they do...), there well be a regular plastic version for people with no money >.>

Yeah, because we should totally put a price on education...



Funny enough, my dad would rather have replicas of the aluminum figures themselves. I think it's likely that both Lego and NASA are going to make loads of cash off this no matter how they go with it.

If I had 15 grand on hand with no apparent use for it, I would buy these. Plus, think of how much they would be worth in 2016..

Um, what?

You appeared to be b!tching about the price of this adventure, which was an educational initiative by Lego and NASA which will get kids excited about and interested in science. By suggesting the price was too high, you were putting a pricetag on getting kids educated.

Think of it this way, even if only 15,000 kids redouble their efforts and improve their scores in science because of this, then we spent $1 per kid to improve their education and their future. That sounds like a bargain to me.

If you want to promote education there would have been better ways to spend that $15,000. Clearly that wasn't the goal here, but it was a bonus. Either way I thought Lego paid for the figures not NASA so its up to them if its worth the cost or not.

I interpreted it as Nasa paying for it.

If thats the case then yeah what a colossal waste of money from an orginization that keeps getting its budget cut as it is. If Lego was paying for it as a publicity thing, and of course to increase interest in science and such, that would be one thing but if NASA is paying its just retarded.

It appears we have a big difference in opinion. I feel anything that gets kids interested in science instead of the latest Call of Duty is worth the cost.

If you goal is to do that the money could be better spent. That was my and Merths point, there are better ways to spend $15,000 worth of taxpayers money if your goal is getting people interested in science.

I support DShiznit. First off, it will attract kids to this Jupiter thing. Second, $15,000 isnt *that* much money, especially considering it'll attract people to the project, and they could possibly make money through extra sponsorships (maybe LEGO will pitch something in?) or even by selling commemorative versions to people. You sell one set of commemorative minifigs for $50,000 to someone, you already made more money back. Thirdly, even if it does amount to zilch, it's by *far* the cheapest thing any government organization has ever done for "fun" that I've heard of: in second place is a $500,000 project for doing something like "stink bomb capabilities" on a modern cruise missle? This is a lot cheaper and a lot less dumb than that.

Don't put a price on something rather trivial like this.

I'd rather NASA focus on more manned space flight, but no biggie, baby steps first. I was kinda hoping in thirty years they would've stuck more sh!t on the moon by now, but whatevs.

Ah, but we aren't getting people interested in science, we're getting children interested in science. Children can be very finicky creatures(I know, I was one). I think this is a great idea, for some of the same reasons stated by Ashbad. No one would pay $50,000 for replicas mind you, but if you were to sell them at $5 a pack, you'd only need to sell a few thousand to make up the losses.

Oh, I was talking $50K for the actual aluminum ones my uncle would probably buy a set of those.

And the plastic ones would be a cool idea too, you could probably get close to making your greenbacks back with that approach alone.

If only 1% of the American population were interested in this, and only 1% of those actually wanted to buy a set, that's still 30,000 people paying $5 a piece for replicas. That's $150,000 right there, 10 times your initial investment.

Issues of price aside, this is awesome =D

Manned space flight is boring.