Elon Musk’s latest brainstorm is to use a giant party balloon to land his returning rockets gently onto a bouncy house. (Yes, he’s serious)
Anyone familiar with Musk knows that he likes to challenge the impossible and reshape the way we think about technology, transportation, space exploration, and more.
SpaceX, Musk’s ambitious spacecraft company revolutionized the use of rockets by making them reusable – launching them into orbit and then having them return by gently touching down on a landing pad.
The program had it’s failures, as is expected with any groundbreaking advancements of this magnitude, but it’s had an incredible run of successes as well.
Now that the reusable rockets program is proven and stable, Musk has a new idea for how to bring his spacecraft home: A giant party balloon. Need helium to fill your stores’ regular party balloons? Get a free online helium quote from us here.
This is gonna sound crazy, but …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2018
SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2018
And then land on a bouncy house
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2018
Why attempt something like this? Presumably, a giant helium balloon landing on a bouncy house would be a less expensive, gentler way to touch the rockets back down to Earth.
There’s no official word on whether or not this experiment is going to happen, but you know we’ll let you know!