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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is considered something of a mad scientist by a lot of people, but not all for the wrong reasons. He has taken huge risks and leaps of faith that would have caused many to age prematurely with dread but has come out smelling like a rose every time. Recently, however, the billionaire firebrand has posted an idea that might be his craziest yet. It involves catching rockets with a party balloon and a bouncy house.
Musk has had some absolutely insane ideas in the past. He made a bet that he could build a giant battery in less than 100 days in South Australia and did it way ahead of schedule. He made a joke about drilling underground to deal with traffic jams and then made that into a reality.
His most recent proposal, which he announced via Tweet, really takes the cake. He even prefaced it with the caption “This is gonna sound crazy, but …”
“SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon,” the Tweet reads. “And then land on a bouncy house.”
Naturally, this prompted a flurry of varying responses from social media users. They ranged from the absolutely excited to the perplexed to the apoplectic that Musk would waste his time and resources on such craziness. On the other hand, this idea sounds so absolutely like Elon that it’s almost ridiculous that he hasn’t thought of it before.
More to the point, this isn’t actually the first time that a balloon was proposed as a means of catching rockets, TechCrunch reports. Several companies have tried to do it in the past but all attempts have thus far failed. All those entities didn’t have a mad genius behind the wheel who doesn’t seem to care about the costs, though, so Musk might just make the difference.
