They say don't play with your food, but that's exactly what a former NASA engineer did by dropping an egg from space without breaking it.
Ex-NASA and Apple engineer-turned-YouTuber Mark Rober wanted to do an experiment many did in school to the extreme - 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 that could hold a raw egg and keep it safe from cracking after being dropped from the tallest height.
The people who might have tried this in school probably learned a valuable lesson about the mess eggs can make when they smash and how incredible a well-built contraption can be.
Advert
Mark wanted to go for the ultimate egg-drop and his first idea was to drop one 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 massive structure, and until someone comes along and builds something bigger, the whole 'drop an egg off the world's tallest building' by Mark is still a monumental achievement.
He decided to take things to the next level and drop an egg from space instead.
Advert
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 into space.
Advert
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 dry land.
Advert
Opening up the rocket, Mark reached inside and was able to pluck out one distinctly unbroken egg, rendering the whole thing a huge success.
Topics: Space, Food and Drink, NASA, Science, Weird
Gregory Robinson