Rolls-Royce Engineers Build A Model Jet Engine Out Of Legos
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We’ve seen some very impressive Lego sculptures in recent months, ranging from an unlikely pairing of Star Wars and artist M.C. Escher to a Lego version of the movie Inception. With all due respect to those who have come before, however, I think we’re going to have to crown a new champion in the Lego arena. Take a look at this Lego jet engine unveiled by Rolls-Royce engineers at the Farnborough International Airshow earlier this week.
The engine is a half-scale model of Rolls-Royce’s Trent 1000 engine, weighing in at 675 pounds, and nearly five feet wide. According to Wired, it’s composed of 152,455 individual Lego pieces and took a four-person team eight weeks to build. Sadly, it isn’t functional, so if you want to steal the Lego championship I guess you’re going to have a complete Lego plane and then fly cross-country in it. Just try not to hit my house when the laws of physics kick back in and you go tumbling out of the sky.
So, why did the RR engineers spend so much time and effort building what amounts to the most ingenious way of avoiding actual work ever? According to Rolls-Royce Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stein:
We are very pleased some of our own graduates and apprentices have contributed to building it, ensuring it is as realistic as possible. We hope that this representation of our technology will help to enthuse and inspire the potential scientists and engineers of the future about the career opportunities they could pursue.
That’s fair enough. Although I imagine any young kids inspired by this are going to be slightly disappointed that you can’t build real jet engines out of Legos. Nevertheless, it’s a damned impressive bit of Lego-work, and here’s a video about the making of the model.
