Dutch Moonbase History
In 2010 we continued our work on our project "Earth under Attack". Marco build some extra moc's to bring to the Lego FanWelt event in Koln in november 2010. We were asked by Hein-Jan Kemperman of The Little Arms Store to join a project for the Star Wars event in Legoland Germany in september 2010.
Coming out of his Dark Ages in 2003, Marco Baas went looking for building-inspiration on the Internet. After a long search he found Moonbase, just what he was looking for: buildings, space and minifigs. Mike van Leeuwen had been building spaceships for a long time and wanted to try something new.
Early 2004 Marco came up the idea to have a Moonbase layout at Legoworld in oktober that year, something not tried before in Holland. The result was a small layout with 10 participants. On the last day of Legoworld, Mike, one of the participants of the Moonbase project, suggested that we go on with the idea of Moonbase. Mike and Marco shared many of the same ideas and interests in Space and Moonbase. Dutch Moonbase was a fact.
In 2005 we visited several meetings with Dutch Moonbase and slowly the interest in Moonbase grow within the Dutch Lego-community. We planned a layout for Legoworld 2005 and the result was a 25m2 layout with Dutch and French builders. The reactions from the audience were very positive and Dutch Moonbase became a household word at Dutch meetings.
2006 was an other year with growing layouts at meetings and an even bigger layout at Legoworld 2006 (33m2). It was also the beginning of a change within Dutch Moonbase. We wanted to get even better, more detailed modules and we also came up with a plan for an extension on the existing Moonbase Standard which we called Moonbase+ (read= Moonbase Extended). After Legoworld 2006 we decided to take a sabbatical and develop our ideas.
In 2007 we started to develop our ideas. We also wanted to expend our horizon beyond the Dutch borders and try to attend meetings in Germany and Belgium, but we moved that plan forward to 2008. We made the first attempts at the new Moonbase+ standard with the first small show in february 2007 at a LowLug Meeting.
In Frechen (D) in january 2008 we had our first large layout build by just the two of us, showing our Moonbase+ standard in 'Project Alpha'. We also worked on new ways of presenting Dutch Moonbase. Our website was rebuild and came online november 3rd 2007. In 2008, after the show in Frechen, we started with “The Story”, a ficional cronological story of Dutch Moonbase supported with pictures of our moc’s and projects. This today is a continues work in progress.
The rest of 2008 wasn't a very productive year for us were it came to building and visiting meetings. Mike went abroad for 6 months and work on our latest project 'Earth under Attack' was only done by Marco. The last part of 2008 and the major part of 2009 was used by Mike to catch up. After the summer holidays Mike also started work on our new website, learning all about Joomla (our old site was build with iWeb).
November 2009 we had our 5th anniversary. Can't believe it's been 5 years.
The Dutch Moonbase crew
Marco Baas and Mike van Leeuwen (photo by Joe Meno - 2008)
About Dutch Moonbase
Dutch Moonbase is owned and operated by Marco Baas and Mike van Leeuwen. This website is the property of Dutch Moonbase and maintained by both Mike van Leeuwen and Marco Baas. The domainname dutchmoonbase.nl is owned by Marco Baas. The domainname dutchmoonbase.com is owned by Mike van Leeuwen.
We have a strick policy were it comes to membership. You can become a member on invitation only, you need to be 18 years or older and be·an above average legobuilder. Reason for this is that we want to maintain a certain level of building and we have found that it easier to communicate with AFOLS’s. Nevertheless we are always on the lookout for young talent so don’t worry, if you are a youngster and you make amazing Modules, you’re in. Membership is free as we are not a club. We are just a group of AFOL’s that build Moonbase and Space MOC’s and show this at meetings.
Dutch Moonbase mission statement
With Dutch Moonbase we want to promote the Moonbase Module Standard. Besides Moonbase we want to promote building with legobricks in general. We do this by showing our MOC’s at meetings, by presentations on PC/monitor, with folders, workshops and offcourse this website. With our timeline “The Story” we tell a fictional cronological story of Dutch Moonbase, supported with pictures of our moc’s and projects. The Story is a continues work in progress.
All website-content is property of Dutch Moonbase (copyright 2004-2010). You can use the information but be sportive and mention the source. Just let us know if you want to use any info and drop us an e-mail.