Giant Lego Serenity spaceship astounds (pictures)
A fan's 70,000-piece tribute to "Firefly" results in one of the biggest Lego builds of all time.
Serenity insanity
For his day job, 37-year-old mechanical engineer Adrian Drake designs combustion science experiments for the International Space Station. In his off time, Drake (also known in the Lego community as brickfrenzy) loves to build large-scale custom Lego masterpieces.
His latest effort resulted in the creation of a 70,000-piece replica of the Serenity spaceship from the 2002 cult classic sci-fi TV show "Firefly" (and subsequent 2005 film "Serenity").
The larger-than-life Serenity ship took Drake roughly 475 hours over 21 months to assemble. Don't expect to pick up this creation and fly it around easily, though, as the behemoth Lego Serenity ship weighs 135 pounds measures an astounding length of 7 feet, 2 inches.
Ready for a closeup
Tail end
Dining room
Jayne's salvo
The bridge
Cargo bay
Lights illuminate the cargo bay of the Serenity spaceship. Amazingly, creator Adrian Drake did not glue together any part of the 70,000-piece monster toy.
"There are probably $7-10k in parts alone, plus a few hundred hours of labor," Drake recently said in a Reddit discussion. "I would never sell the original, so if Nathan Fillion says, 'I want this,' I'd build a copy, and glue it together. So parts and labor is likely $25k just to get started, and another few hundred hours to make the copy."
Intergalactic smugglers
The cast
A work in progress
"I have a lot of experience building technic, and having a strong frame is vital to that," Adrian Drake said on Reddit. "So, I build a good framework and then attach parts to it, while keeping in mind the interior spaces I want to include. In the case of this project, I started with the cargo bay and built the walls. Once they were done I capped them with the wings and built the neck. The neck technic is strongly attached to the front bulkhead of the cargo bay, which is a huge mass of bricks and technic."
Behemoth brickery
In this picture of the nearly completed spaceship, it's possible to get a true sense of the 7-foot Serenity's sheer size.
"Once the framework was done, I built the interior corridor and crew quarters, then completed the outside skin of the ship from front to back," Drake said on Reddit. "I came back at the very end and finished the interior details (cargo bay, dining room, and bridge). The break (disassembly) points for this were determined by the width of the doorway to my basement, and how big my car is, in order to transport it."
See more of the finer details of Serenity in Drake's extensive Flickr gallery.