I've decided to take it upon myself to rebuild all of my old lego sets for my 5 year old son who is very much into Legos. An excellent idea, right? Except long ago I dismantled most of them and placed the pieces into bins according to colour (or specialty pieces if they had prints on them or were clear) which seemed brilliant at the time but which is turning out to be a royal pain as I apparently have the mother-load of black and grey legos. Not so much fun when you are trying to find a tiny piece in a field of giants. next time I'm using zip-locks and storing my model.

THANK GOODNESS FOR THIS SET! It's mostly blue and was much easier to find the pieces.

On to the Pros & Cons of this set which in my opinion are one and the same depending on your preferences with Legos. Overall it's a fantastic set with lots of moveable parts (opening satellite recovery area, stearable front section), a mini-rocket. accessories for the classic Lego dude, and a launchable satellite.

If you are into the tiny details and small intricate parts this is wonderful. The small mobile pieces which may break off and get lost during play along with some repetative building might also bother some.

I'd recommend this set more for collectors of the classics or completionists as it's stylistically beautiful and a fairly realistic set (as far as what might be needed in a starfleet's repetoire) than for everyday play - simply becasue of the small part factor.

I only acquired one of these recently and instantly wished I owned it when I was younger. Its a very sleek truck which carries and launches an excellently designed satellite. It also has a couple of unique pieces and fits in well with my collection. Another successful design.

While for example #6928 Uranium Search Vehicle and #6951 Robot Command Center are bigger and bluer, take out the white satellite here and you are left almost exclusively with blue pieces.

Box/Instructions

No more box for me but the instructions are of the folding sheet variety, standard for sets of this size. They have the moon dune background common for classic space sets and go through the build in twelve steps for about 100 pieces, or approximately 75 if you leave out the parts for the minifigure and satellite. That satellite is treated as a sub-build and seems to take a decidedly more leisurely pace with eight steps used to build it. They show one alternative model which is a rather interesting spaceship (drone carrier?).

Parts

If you had any doubt at all, blue is definitely the main colour on this set, almost half of all the pieces included are blue. Not only that but the non-blue parts are mostly small pieces, two white 4 x 4 dishes are the largest parts in a different colour. There are some nice parts here too, two large (blue) supports, a (blue) 2 x 4 - 2 x 4 hinge, a (blue) camera brick (those pieces with studs on the sides, also four of these in black), three (blue) 1 x 4 offset plates, a (blue) 3 x 4 wedge and the top part here: a (blue, are we noticing a pattern?) tail with printed space logo which seems to be unique for this set! Why here and not in a real spaceship is anyone's guess but since I have this set I'm not complaining. Between all those blue parts it is easy to overlook the rest which still has some useful pieces, with four of those trans-red antennae this set was for a long time (before the advent of Space Police) our greatest resource of this then so-sought-after part.

Minifigures

One white classic spaceman equipped with radio and wrench. I wonder how the colour of the spacemen in each set was decided, did they go for white here as the satellite was white too?

The build

Nothing complicated, it goes along smoothly and the only repetitive part are the four arms which hold the satellite in place. Construction of the launch platform itself is rather similar to the one found on #6849 Satellite Patroller but here it fits better with the size of the vehicle. I always wondered about the four small white parts used in the rover itself, it feels very unnecessary to have these 2 x 1 plates and jumper plates in white as they break up the blue and black colour scheme.

The completed model

I just happen to have found an old catalogue from 1987 between a bunch of instructions, in there this rover is called Satellietlanceerder (Satellite Launcher) which seems to describe the function a lot better. At any rate, it is how we played with this, lack of visible propulsion and guidance systems notwithstanding. You really need to let your imagination take over a bit here, otherwise there's not going to happen much (let alone recovery). The peculiar construction on the tail fin was taken as a drone that could also be launched, so you could have as many things flying as you have hands. A weak point is the rover's (lack of) maneuverability, it can not negate rough terrain and the steering feels a bit strange with that short front and long rear section.

Overall opinion

In the end this is not a bad set but there are better ones out there: on the plus side there are some really nice parts and a lot of playability (if you can overlook the apparent lack of propulsion and controls); on the downside is a somewhat uninteresting construction, a weird colour scheme and a rather ungainly ground vehicle.