Man drops egg from space and it miraculously doesn't crack
A few decades ago putting a man in space was a big deal, now we're sending eggs up there for fun
Humanity has truly reached the final frontier of discovery as a former NASA engineer has managed to drop an egg from space without breaking it.
Ex-NASA and Apple engineer turned YouTuber Mark Rober wanted to take an experiment many did in school to the greatest possible extent by sending an egg into space only to have it plummet Earthwards once more.
The experiment attempted was the humble egg drop, with the challenge being to build a contraption which could house a raw egg and keep it safe from cracking after being dropped from the tallest height.
Advert
Lots of you may have done this in school and learned a valuable lesson about the mess eggs can make when they smash, and how incredible a well built contraption can be.
Mark wanted to go for the grandaddy of all egg drops and his first idea was to drop an egg off the world's tallest building, which at the moment is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Standing at 828 metres (2,717ft) tall, it's a monumental structure, but there's always a chance someone will come along and build something taller, which puts a dampener on the whole 'drop an egg off the world's tallest building' achievement.
With that in mind, Mark decided to take things to the next level and drop an egg from space instead.
The ex-NASA engineer's plan was to fit an egg into a rocket and fly that up to space in a balloon, which would then send the rocket hurtling back down to Earth.
The idea was that the egg-rocket would land back on a very soft landing pad, saving the egg from smashing upon impact.
One of the key things Mark had to deal with was protecting the egg on the journey to space, as he needed to insulate the egg for the journey otherwise it'd freeze as it went into space and crack on the way.
The experiment was almost struck with disaster after problems with the weather balloon designed to lift the egg up into space.
On the two hour ascent to space from the ground twisting cords wrapped around the string designed to bring down the balloon until the force of it pulled the string and collapsed the balloon.
The whole thing started falling back to Earth at 150mph without coming apart and separating properly, which risked spelling doom for the little egg.
All hope now rested on the chances of the egg-rocket being able to fire itself to freedom and land independently, and thankfully it was able to jettison from the falling balloon and land back on terra firma.
Opening up the rocket, Mark reached inside and was able to pluck out one distinctly unbroken egg, rendering the whole thing a huge success.
Joe Harker