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Elon Musk: SpaceX will use giant party balloons to recover its rockets

It will land on a ‘bouncy house.’

Photo of Phillip Tracy

Phillip Tracy

elon musk spacex ceo

SpaceX has a new solution for recovering rocket components, and it involves giant party balloons and bouncy houses.

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As he often does, Elon Musk took to Twitter to announce his latest unorthodox plan: bringing a “rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon.” He later explained the balloon would allow the cone to retrain its shape “across all mach regimes” and decrease the component’s ballistic coefficient (the ability to overcome air resistance) by two orders of magnitude.

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When asked by popular YouTube channel Smarter Every Day how SpaceX will decide where the upper stage will deorbit, or reenter Earth’s atmosphere, Musk said it would need to land closer to shore on a catcher ship like Mr. Steven. The idea of using a “party balloon” to land the upper stage is part of SpaceX’s goal to recover and recycle every part of its rockets, not just the first stage. If it’s successful, the cost of launching used Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy spacecraft could decrease considerably.

This would all seem like a silly joke had anyone else posted it, but Musk has a proven record of following through with bizarre claims. In a similarly unconventional strategy, SpaceX tried to catch the fairing, or cone-shaped nose piece that covers a rocket’s payload, with a “giant catcher’s mitt” in the form of a high-speed boat. It failed, missing its target by around 300 feet.

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Where will the upper stage and its giant Up-like balloon land? A bouncy house, of course.

 
The Daily Dot