"To get all the bricks required, I posted 23 individual orders on Bricklink. I won’t tell you about the total costs – my wife could read this ;)."

Here is another one also from 2013 by Kohsuke of Jenkins/Hudson fame: http://kohsuke.org/2013/08/13/lego-earth-project/

Impressive project, I always loved Lego. One of the best moments with my step son is creating something out of Lego's and see the sparkle in his eyes. I remember building massive ships and aircrafts when I was a child, no amount of video games can beat this feeling of control and unlimited possibilities.

Can't people easily make a CAD model of a LEGO creation, and end up with a single SKU you can click to order, and get a printed instructional manual and everything? I thought I'd seen that was possible.

And how much would this thing cost?

Lego used to offer something like that inside their Lego Digital Designer application. You create your model, press a button (sort of), and you'd get a nice box with all the pieces and instructions in the mail. Unfortunately, they've discontinued the service. I don't know why.

Part of the retooling process of the brand that occurred to make it. Leading up to this, Lego was coming out of a slump and trying to identify how to streamline the number of bricks, product offerings, and generate solid revenue streams.

Also, a person on brickset suggested it may be sorting costs from manual labor. [1]

[1] http://brickset.com/article/1705

Now we have proof that the centre of the earth has Death Star-like pillar structures and what looks like a power core.

Impressive not only in that it looks nice, but engineered well enough to withstand playtime with a toddler. :)