Lego’s new $200 Concorde is a fantastic homage to the supersonic passenger jet
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Pac Man, Giant Disney Castle, all of the space ones (including the recent rover), and others. I am quickly getting a backlog of lego sets to build with how big these are.
Not personally a plane guy, but this does look really cool and if I was I would likely quickly buy it.
It is a bit of a pity this model doesn't have the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation / Aerospatiale France markings that that livery should have though.
I'm guessing Airbus own the trademark, and it may be a series of Airbus owned aircraft sets.
Seems more like the plane just had bad luck as there seemed to be enough rich people willing to part with their cash to cross the atlantic really quick.
I think a large part of that is passenger demand but also advancements in engine efficiencies. Making the fuel consumption per passenger not horrible.
A lot of the costs problems were directly related to the "over-land sonic boom ban" (on both sides of the Atlantic). The aircraft is VERY inefficient in subsonic flight, the bans had a triple effect:
- Longer flights: Meaning higher staff costs, more wear & tear, suppressing demand (no more "breakfast in London, dinner in Washington DC" ads).
- Reduced destinations: Meaning a smaller fleet, making each aircraft suffer from lack of economies of scale.
- More subsonic flight time meaning higher total flight fuel costs
If sonic booms didn't exist suddenly, I think Concorde could have been a success. The real mystery is why the sonic boom problem wasn't found during testing or development? It isn't like they weren't known about at the time...
There was ban that was quickly overturned. The ban was not for "reasons," the issue was noise pollution and it is a legitimate issue. A lot of working is going into NASA's X-59 project[0] to make overland commercial SST more practical.
It wasn't as popular as envisaged for other reasons too: it turns out that people aren't as willing to compromise on comfort for the faster flight time anyway, people who could afford the luxury were more likely to spend the extra on comfort rather than saving time. This kept prices high because there was not enough demand to expand the service which might have dragged prices lower, rounding off a vicious economic circle. Prices were also inflated by the fuel requirements per passenger flight hour, both in general and because the craft was not fuel efficient at sub-sonic speeds.
Furthermore: at least one of those accidents was due to the craft's design and therefore its safety – the one out of Paris in 2000. Though the flaw that caused that to be possible (part of the fuel tank being exposed while the landing gear was down, allowing debris, in this case parts from the planes own front tire in turn damaged by hitting other debris on the runway, to compromise it) was later mitigated that was a real killer for passenger confidence on an already struggling service.
Having said that about the accident, IIRC Concorde does have one of the best safety records of any aircraft overall when considered against total passenger flight hours, much like flying in general is statistically safer than other forms of transport despite individual incidents tending to be worse.
Here here. Lego prices today on some sets are just out of whack compared to how they were in my childhood. It feels like Lego's biggest market is now grown men with disposable income who buy overpriced sets for themselves because nostalgia. A guy form a former workplace has a room just for his Lego (no kids).
I think they could go even higher than $200 and it would still sell the same.
Data shows prices have probably decreased since you were born (assuming you're over 25 years old): https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15flwte/is....
Then I was mistaken. Apologies.
Sometimes I imagine setting up a LEGO storage wall plus desks, but that would be for building and not display.
It's 11 feet long.
https://www.turbines-rc.com/en/concorde/2019-hm-modelltechni...
How many meters and thousands of dollars would you expect your Concorde set to be?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Dimensions-of-a-LEGO-bri....
Taking that into account I’d say the scale model would maybe be somewhere around 1:32 of the real size (because Lego pieces have a fixed size so you can’t scale everything perfectly).
The real life Concordes are ~62 meters long, have a wingspan of ~26 meters, and are about 12 meters high.
So at this scale the Lego model would be roughly 2 meters long, approx. 82 cm wide, and somewhere around 40 cm tall.
For comparison, the Lego millennium falcon has dimensions 84 x 56 x 21 cm.
The real question, I think, is how true to life we require the model to be. Like, the amount of details in it.
I could see the 1:32 Lego Concorde costing less than the Lego Millennium Falcon, if some sacrifices were made in detail.
So, maybe a price of somewhere around $500 USD could be achievable?
(40cm wide at the bottom)
You're completely failing to communicate, and your worry about whether people like or dislike your post seems to be stopping you from just explicitly saying what you mean. I have no idea what you think you're trying to say, but nothing you've said so far seems like some kind of revelation about lego that we need this slow revelation.
Just say what you mean, completely, with multiple sentences, in a complete logical argument.
(Not that a kid cannot buy a "serious" set and that an adult can't buy a "whimsical" set.)
Nearly every toddler I have come across knows about dinosaurs before they have ever set foot in a museum. My kid knows about the Saturn V because of the LEGO set. He loves the Space Shuttle because of a picture I took at the Smithsonian. His mind will be blown if/when we visit Udvar-Hazy.
The kids are going to be alright.
> Spend quality time with premium LEGO® sets designed specifically for adults. From wonders of the world to movie magic, intrepid space exploration to pop culture icons, luxury cars to architectural masterpieces, there’s a LEGO set waiting for you. So unplug, unbox and unwind. This is your zone.
Concorde specifically has a recommended age rating of "18+" [1].