Doug Hughes stacked the last LEGO brick in his garage, stepping back to admire an 8 foot wide (2.4-meter), 1:42 scale International Space Station (ISS). He never expected it to travel thousands of miles — until NASA found his Instagram and invited the model to a celebration in Houston.
“Why do I build LEGO models? Well, I like having something tangible that I've created and completed,” said Hughes, a Boeing Commercial Airplanes product development engineer.
In his product development role at Boeing, Hughes does a lot of research, which if successful, goes to another team to see the project through. Hughes says he is drawn to LEGO projects since they give him a taste of seeing something through from start to finish.
His take on the ISS is almost entirely made from LEGO, with painted cardboard solar panels and a metal frame with wires to hang the build.
Building blocks of innovation
Hughes began building in early 2024 and worked on the project for about 18 months. He created hands-on physical mock-ups, sketches and digital designs, showcasing the same activities used to design products in Commercial Airplanes.
He also pointed to a LEGO link with past kinematics (study of motion) work at Boeing. He and his team built a LEGO Technic model to study the kinematics of a landing gear concept. The hands-on experiment proved challenging and gave him a new perspective to the mechanical systems team’s complex designs.
“To tell you the truth, we found it incredibly difficult to recreate the complex gear design developed by our mechanical systems friends, and it gave me a much deeper appreciation for the incredible work they do,” Hughes said. “It also inspired me to tackle more ambitious moving LEGO projects in the future.” — Doug Hughes, Boeing engineer
As for kinematic elements in his ISS build, Hughes included rotating solar panels, rotating heat rejection panels, and a traversing MBS (mobile base system) that crawls back and forth across the truss. These required a similar logical methodology to produce a successful design.
Houston, we have a model
After sharing the project on Instagram, NASA saw his work and reached out, inviting him to bring the model to Houston. Attendees of the celebration included a wide variety of NASA employees, senior agency leaders, international partners such as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and industry representatives, including Boeing.
The display got prime real estate at the event, and Hughes said the model led to fascinating conversations about ISS technical details with many of the experts themselves.
A senior NASA engineer and avid LEGO enthusiast who is married to the International Space Station program manager personally led Hughes on a tour of several major NASA facilities in the Houston area.
“The trip was one of the most unique and fun experiences in my life,” Hughes said. “It was a happy convergence where my favorite hobby — which, funny enough, uses many of the same aerospace design skills honed here at Boeing — let me geek out with like-minded NASA engineers at their incredible facilities.”
By Maddie Crisalli, Boeing writer
