The US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., wanted to do something special for the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was screening at the center’s IMAX dome.

Giving moviegoers and fans the opportunity to get up close to a full-scale replica of the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit fit the bill when it came to something special. Luckily, organizers only had to look in their backyard to find such a display.

That’s because a team of Star Wars fans in Hunstville has been volunteering for years to construct the cockpit of Han Solo and Chewbacca’s signature smuggling ship as part of a mammoth worldwide fan effort that has spanned more than a decade to build a full-size version of the spacecraft.

“Some people golf. We build Millennium Falcon cockpits,” Dan Valdez, a fan who heads up the Huntsville team and social media efforts for the worldwide project, tells Upvoted.

According to Valdez, since the film’s debut in December at the center, the display has been popular with visitors, and space center officials have said they would like the cockpit to have a permanent home there. But the offer of a base of operations also brings with it the realization of just how much work still needs to be done on the project.

“We’re now approaching a very scary part of this project,” Valdez says, “and that’s ‘Oh my god, it’s going to happen!'”

Upvoted spoke with three of the members of the Alabama cockpit team—Valdez, Greg Dietrich, and Jake Polatty—about their work on the full-scale Millennium Falcon project, talking about what it has been like to build the cockpit and when fans might get a chance to get their hands on the controls of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy (or at least a close approximation of it).

What’s the Full-Scale Millennium Falcon Project?

So far, the effort to build a full-scale Falcon has gone on about as long as the time between George Lucas’ final prequel film, 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, and last year’s restart of the series, The Force Awakens. But the idea didn’t spring from the trio in Alabama.

In 2005, Chris Lee, a fan from Nashville, Tenn., decided to turn his dream of 1:1 scale replica of the Millennium Falcon into a reality. He set up a web page and forum about his proposed project and started the search for other fans who shared his dream and, more importantly, had the skills to help achieve it.

“He sent out messages to other people who might be interested in bringing it together,” Valdez says. “It’s not something you could do singlehandedly, obviously. So he started bringing together 3D modelers and others that were interested, model makers and hobbyists.”

Currently, there are about 300 volunteers helping on the project, living around the globe from Seattle to England. Tasks are divided up, and volunteers work on everything from creating a 3D model of the ship to building a version of the Falcon’s Dejarik board, the holographic game that Chewbacca and C-3PO play in A New Hope.

Initially, the project’s goal was to construct a single, free-standing, interactive Falcon that resembled its onscreen counterpart as closely as possible. That would give the re-creation estimated dimensions of 114 feet long, 30 feet tall at the top of the ship’s radar dish, and 80 feet wide, says Dietrich, who is the cockpit team’s fabrication specialist.

But that plan was abandoned, and the project turned instead to replicating the ship’s interior in pieces. It’s still full size and being built to scale—it’s just not being done to be housed in one gigantic structure.

“Everything we’re building now is a standalone prop,” Valdez says. “It doesn’t fit into a full-scale replica yet. It’s a travel version. … It packs up in a moving van.”

How Did the Trio Get Involved?

It wasn’t until 2012 that Dietrich became the first of the eventual Alabama trio to join Lee’s project. He found out about it after meeting Stinson Lentz, a fan and volunteer located in Philadelphia who had created a full-scale 3D model of the cockpit. Dietrich then reached out to Lee and quickly found he hadn’t missed out on much despite joining the effort after so many years.

“[Lee] said he hadn’t really done much yet,” Dietrich explains. “The site had been up since 2005, and he’d done a little bit here, a little bit there. I told him, ‘That’s going to change now. … I’m going to start with the cockpit center console, and let’s just see what happens from there.”

In a year, Dietrich and the volunteers he recruited constructed the ship’s center console, the area where Han and Chewie sit to pilot the craft past TIE fighters, asteroids, and space slugs. But he still needed help with the console’s electrics so that it would light up and, in some cases, sound like the actual Millennium Falcon.

That’s when Lee asked Valdez, a friend, if he could help out. Valdez agreed and pulled in Polatty, his friend and a fellow Hunstville resident.

“We’re both electronics guys and do home automation, smart home integration for a living, so it comes natural to us to add lights and sound effects and really cool things,” says Valdez, who added that when he met Dietrich about the project for the first time in 2013, the room “looked like the Millennium Falcon had exploded, pieces of Star Wars everywhere.”

That introduction, though, did nothing to shake Valdez’s and Polatty’s enthusiasm about the project and about working with Dietrich.

“We all clicked as a group,” Polatty says. “We came together, and we were determined to make it more than it actually was.”

What Challenges Has the Team Faced?

“No detail is too small” could be the project’s motto. In fact, one project volunteer—a fan who lives in England—has the sole job of identifying the thousands of real-world, everyday items the original movie special effects designers used as parts to create the interior of the Millennium Falcon for The Empire Strikes Back.

Once those parts are ID’ed—whether they’re turntable pieces from sound systems, handles from irons, or dashboard panels from Volvos—team members figure out how to replicate them. Occasionally, that can mean going to a junkyard or logging on to eBay and finding that right circuit box to purchase.

But most times that’s cost prohibitive. Take the Falcon’s cockpit seats. The film’s designers used Martin-Bake aircraft ejection seats, which run at least $20,000 just for used models, Polatty adds.

When team members can’t salvage or buy the parts, Dietrich steps up to build the items from scratch, using 3D printers, CNC cutting machines, laser cutters, or other fabrication tools to create a replica part for the replica ship.

“[Dietrich] pores over screen shots and behind-the-scenes pictures and then fabricates and paints the shapes and parts and makes them look as good as possible,” Polatty explains.

“That’s a huge part of the project,” Valdez says. “So when you hear that we’ve been working on this for three years in Greg’s garage, a lot of that has just been designing individual pieces, sanding, cutting, putting pinstripes on panels, and going through the same motions the prop guys did with the addition of having to engineer all these devices they just had to grab out of a scrap yard and move on.”

That attention to detail, however, has required the team to start from square one more than once. The cockpit’s center console has been completely rebuilt three times in an effort to create a version that looked the sharpest and cleanest.

“We absolutely will not compromise on an object,” Valdez states. “If we don’t know what it looks like we aim for a rough shape. And then as time goes, if we find out what that [object] is, we will totally rip that piece off and rebuild it from scratch.”

How Is It Funded?

The labor for this project might be paid for in sweat and sore muscles, but cash is needed to buy the materials and tools. And that money comes out of the pockets of volunteers.

Dietrich estimates he’s spent anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 on the cockpit since 2012 (“That’s a lot of dates,” he says, laughing), and Valdez says the project still needs another $550,000 (not counting labor costs) to complete it.

Because Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Co. own the rights to Star Wars and the Millennium Falcon, volunteers can’t use the project to generate funding for it. According to Valdez, that means working with fan representatives from Disney to “dance the fine legal line” and find acceptable alternative ways—such as donations of materials or other items—to secure financial backing.

“That doesn’t stop us from doing T-shirt sales,” Valdez shares. “It doesn’t stop us from doing unrelated fundraisers to sell something silly that’s maybe fan art. … You may see that pop up on the Facebook page at some point.”

What’s the Project’s Current Status?

As of the beginning of 2016, about 80 percent to 85 percent of the construction on the cockpit has been completed, Valdez said. In February, they will finally get the “iconic window” installed, another step justifying the team’s hard work. Dietrich, Valdez, and Polatty estimate they work on the project every day, whether that’s a quick 15 minutes to an hour on a weekday or anywhere from eight to 20 hours on weekends.

Once the cockpit is complete, Valdez says that the team will most likely move on to the nav corridor or the hold—the area that houses the Falcon’s large navigational computer—in the next two years, adding that Lee has started to construct corridor sections for the project in Tennessee.

As for the project’s final completion date, Valdez states that it’s anyone’s guess.

“We don’t know when that day is,” he adds. “Hopefully sooner than later.”

What Has the Experience Been Like?

“It’s already spine-tingling walking into it,” Valdez describes. “We’re a little jaded when it’s in pieces laying around. But when it gets all put together, and we put the sound on, and you walk into it, … it’s a really amazing experience. It feels so real. I got chills the first time I stepped into it a couple years ago when it was finally together and all the lights were on.”

It’s that type of reaction that Valdez, Dietrich, and Polatty want other Star Wars fans to experience when they see the full-scale Falcon, whether that’s at the US Space & Rocket Center or another location.

“We really only want the people who really care about Star Wars to come and see this,” Valdez says. “We want to see little kids’ eyes light up because they’re, quote unquote, the biggest fan ever. We want to see them walk up the ramp and see them sit at the gun consoles and pretend they’re in a movie. And the little kids are going to be ages 6 to 66. … We’re doing it for those people.

“Since it’s been at the Space & Rocket Center it’s just been a joy to see people walk by this project,” he adds. “And when they turn the corner and see us, they see this full-size replica of a cockpit and their eyes just light up.”

Ultimately, the biggest joy of the project for the trio has been seeing all these volunteers come together and learn new skills, such as soldering or using 3D printer, that they can use outside of trying to build full-scale Corellian YT-1300 light freighter.

“Some people look at the project as juvenile or ridiculous, but it’s not,” Valdez says. “It’s skill building. It’s about working with other people. All of this can go on résumé. … It’s just absolutely amazing to see people learn and grow on this project.”

The Full-Scale Millennium Falcon Project is still looking for volunteers. For more information, you can find the project on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. There also is a cockpit build page for the project.