Building The Millennium Falcon: Adventures In Hollywood Shocker!

As I was winding up my research into the building of the Millennium Falcon,  I came across a weird note found at the bottom of the box of records that just had two faded words "Filming permit", and "Scene 7a - '/..kie."

I also found this intriguing photo of a movie shoot.

I assume this is the movie related to the film permit.  I could find no other record of a film being shot during the time the Falcon was being made.

Looking at the photo it looks like a western movie, with a human and a wookiee.  Very interesting, but lacking other evidence I decided to abandon this line of inquiry and stick to construction details.

However during an archeological spelunking into the ancient libraries of Coruscant, I found an answer.  It was taped to a broken down droid in a disused trash compactor with a sign that said "Beware the Rancor".

That answer is in the form of this rather distressed movie poster:

Holy cow, right?

So the wookiee is Chewbacca.  This means that Chewie already had experience with the Falcon long before he joined up with Han Solo.

Crazy, right?

That Chewbacca is full of surprises.

Building The Millennium Falcon: Canopies and Christenings

I have almost come to the end of my research into unearthed historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.  This series includes all my results.

Visual records show that one of the last things to be installed onto the Falcon is the cockpit canopy. 

After the canopy was installed all that was left to do was some fine tuning of the computer system, a final update to the Dejarik table, and fueling up the engines.

As is traditional with ships, the final step before launch was the christening of the ship by breaking a bottle of the finest Corellian Ale over the bow by a dignitary of some renown.

In a weird quirk of fate it is unknown who the renown dignitary was, but it assumed she was a dilettante, and likely a mistress of the foreman as is the (just made up by me) Corellian tradition.

This is the last of the information I have been able to unearth about the Falcon's construction.  I have managed to piece together the majority of the story, but there are some loose threads.

For example, there is this weird note found at the bottom of the box of records that just had two faded words "Filming permit", and "Scene 7a - '/..kie.".    Weird, right?  If I figure out what that means I'll let you know.

Building The Millennium Falcon: Radar and The Cannon

I have been deep in research, plumbing the depths of the historical archives for photos from the Corellian Ship Yards - why?  Cause I'm a nerd that's why.

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.  This series covers all of them.

Digging deep under piles of paper - what?  Paper in space? Yes.  Paper - under the pizza boxes, and receipts for Blockbuster rentals of the original trilogy, I found these images.

The first is installing of the main cannon.  Don't get cocky.

 The second is programming and aligning the radar dish on top of the falcon.

At first I wasn't sure why the radar dish would need to be aligned, as that is clearly a self-aligning model.  However digging under some old magazines revealed hand written instructions for getting free HBO.  Mystery solved.

Thats all I have this time.  I'm still digging thru the archives, so stay tuned for more historical photos of this legendary freighter.

Building The Millennium Falcon: Outer Hull

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.  This series covers all of them.

The outer hull of the Falcon is very rugged.  Over the course of many decades of adventures it has withstood a beating time and time again, but only came away with some carbon scoring.

Many of the hull panels were assembled off-site, transported to the construction site, and installed onto the main frame of the Falcon.  In this shot the top left mandible panels are being hoisted into place.

A workman cuts a bar of Durasteel to length.  Research has shown this panel is on the aft left side of the ship. right above the Dejarik board.

A small crew of workers install the louvers over the main engine vents on the right aft quarter of the ship. This painstaking process is hard to get right, but the attention to detail in installation is critical for the Falcon completing the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.

Research into the history of the Falcon construction is still ongoing.  Stay tuned for more images as they are discovered.

Building The Millennium Falcon: Dejarik

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.  This series covers all of them.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the famous Dejarik game was installed early in the construction phase of the Falcon. The reason for this is lost to the mists of time, but the prevailing theory is that the foreman's kids needed a place to hang out after school.

The main Dejarik module is built off-site, and installed into the frame of the spacecraft.

Once the game system was installed, high paid tech workers swooped in and programmed it.  It takes a long time to properly tune the game, as each creature in the game is trained like a Tamagotchi, making each game unique*.

It is due to the unique way this game is programmed that I don't think the game is installed early because the foreman needed a place for his kids to play after school.  However I do think it is likely that the real truth is that the foreman had a teenage nephew that he described thusly. "That boy is really good with those comp-u-tor thangs.  I can never figure it out me-self, but he knows how to make web pages for his pet tribble**.  He's a lazy mofo, but with comp-u-tors he's like a genius or something, so I did my sister  a favour and gave him a job with the game thinger."

Those of you in IT will also recognize this line of thinking on the part of the foreman as the likely cause for why the game pieces flicker a lot when playing.

I suspect similar stories are behind the high quality of the ships light speed drive.

* This is not an actual fact

** yeah, I know it seems odd for the nephew to have a pet from the Star Trek universe, when he is clearly based in the Star Wars universe, and you are likely all feeling smugly superior that you recognized that fact.  Good for you!  However I would point out that there is a lot of evidence that Star Wars is based in our universe, and you can, right now if you wish, visit the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, USS Enterprise, making it also our universe, so it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch now does it, you smugly superior sum-bitch.

Building The Millennium Falcon: The Main Frame

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.

This photo shows the back frame being attached to the main spine of the ship.  Notice the large crane elevating and moving the large structure into place.  Also notice Bossk in the bottom left, during his early years he supplemented his bounty hunter income by working as a delivery boy in the shipyards.

Once the frame was maneuvered into place, workers welded large bolts to firmly attach it to the giant spine of the craft.

After a hard days work, the crew enjoys a well deserved lunch break.

Building The Millennium Falcon: The Beginning

I have always liked the historical photos of large ships being built.  Perhaps you know the ones I mean, of ships like the Titanic under construction in Northern Ireland. (If not, click here)

So as some of find regular readers of this very fine blog may recall, I have recently come into possession of the largest LEGO kit ever put up for retail sale. A full minifig scale model of the Millennium Falcon.

Building that will be a project in itself, and it will lead to more photographic projects.  However I wanted to capture the building of the Falcon itself - not in time-lapse or anything mundane like that, but rather in the style of those old timey photos of the gigantic ships of old.

This new series is what this project is about.  As I build the Falcon I am going to be taking said photos, and posting them here.

To kick it off, like all building projects, we'll start by studying the blueprints.

I am going to be taking my time to build the model, and will release photos as I go.  There are 17 bags of parts, and I am on bag 3, so I suspect this will be a summer long project.  Stay tuned to this blog for updates!

Entries in this series

• Building The Millennium Falcon: The Main Frame
• Building The Millennium Falcon: Dejarik
• Building The Millennium Falcon: Outer Hull
• more coming soon