Cardboard Spaceship

We have a new baby coming in a couple months. As such, some large items needed to be purchased. Specifically, the click-n-go car seat. Because we have two cars, we needed two bases. What arrived, was two massive boxes.

Naturally, we made them into a spaceship.

The bottom is the main compartment, and houses all of the controls of the ship. It has a few flaps to hold devices and maps.

The top section started out as storage. But it quickly became apparent that we needed some head room. I ended up cutting a hole about 25% larger than his head in the top of the lower box. The the top box lay upside on that. Now he had a ledge inside for storage, but could now stand upright.

We used a camping lantern to light up the area, and some crinkle paper as the door.  All of the small cutouts were either map cards, devices or weapons. I know weapons are controversial, but we often have discussions about what is pretend, and getting consent from friends if he ever plays at daycare. We watch Transformers and Zelda so the idea of weapons is already a known concept. I prefer to root those concepts and wrap them in a healthy understanding, instead of acting like they don't exist.

The mission began by figuring which planet to visit. Of course, he would pick Mars. After vigorously shaking the sides of the rocket to simulate takeoff, we were ready for our circularization burn (We play a lot of Kerbal Space Program). We dialed in the burn parameters on the control panel and circularized our orbit.

Next it was time for our Mars transfer burn. Jacob dialed that in, and we decided we would initiate cryo-sleep for the 8 month journey. Once we arrived, the computer woke us up, and it was time to initiate a landing procedure.

Jacob ended up crashing the ship into the surface, but not before securing our helmets. Once on the ground, we had to use our devices to make a lot of ship repairs.

Before leaving Mars, we had to explore and find the monsters. We used our weapons in the new baby's room to defeate the evil monster. We used the red light on the lantern to make it creepy. Or "Cweepy" as he would say. He can say it correctly, but prefers to be cute.

After charging back up (because of course now we're robots who needed to charge), we were back on our ship and ready to go. The trip home is always faster, and we made it back to earth in one piece. The ship shook vigorously upon splashdown, but we made it nonetheless.

Yesterday was recycling day, but the ship somehow defeated my laziness to break it all down. The rocket will undoubtedly fly another day.