In your early years, you must have dropped a dozen eggs and they all surely cracked but a NASA engineer took this endeavor to new heights and decided to drop an egg from space. The egg did not crack. But how?
The video has garnered over 14 million views in just two days. Mark declared that the egg didn't crack despite falling back to earth at 150 mph.
The YouTube video posted on November 25 by Mark Rober went viral and the whole internet surfing population only had one question in their minds. Why didn't the egg break?
Let's find out!
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How did they do it?
Needless to say, before the experiment there were some things to be taken care of
- The team conducting the egg drop had to first create a contraption that could store a raw egg and keep it safe from cracking after being dropped from the sky.
- Mark's initial plan was to drop the egg from the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. But then he decided to go higher, According to a UNILAD report.
- The egg was fitted into a rocket that flew up to space in a balloon.
- The egg was sent hurtling down to Earth as soon as it reached the desired height.
- The egg landed on a soft surface which played a huge factor in preventing it from cracking.
- According to the ex-engineer, one of the key things to the success of the experiment was the protection of the egg during the journey to space.
- The egg would've frozen and cracked on the way if the YouTuber had not insulated it.
The Initial Plan That Failed
The YouTuber stated that he started this journey three years ago.
He also expressed that he did not know that this would be the most physically, financially, and mentally draining video he would have ever attempted.
Explaining his initial plan, he said, “The plan was to clamp an egg to the front of a rocket, then attach that rocket to a weather balloon and take it up to space. Once there, the weather balloon release it, and just by using gravity only, the rocket would eventually accelerate past Mach 1 breaking the speed of sound, and then would autonomously adjust the four fins on the back to steer itself to the target location and then 300 feet above the ground, it would release the egg which would free fall onto a mattress that we did place on the ground."
The egg broke many times while conducting the test, after which he took advice from his friend Adam Stelzner who is a Ph.D. from Caltech and also the chief engineer for perseverance and Mars sample return.
Stelzner instantly spotted a fatal flaw in the experiment.
Why didn't the egg break?
Rober dumped the old design and spent a couple of months designing a brand new system that borrowed heavily from the concept of Curiosity Landing.
The Youtuber explained the new plan and said, “We would still go into space on a weather balloon but this time, but this time the rocket would have fins that didn't move and it would be three times as long and four times as heavy to guarantee that we would get the egg to supersonic speeds on the way down"
“Just like NASA separates the crew stage in the upper atmosphere and then uses arrow braking to dissipate a bunch of energy and speed, we would separate from the back half of the rocket about halfway down after we'd already broken the sound barrier and because this is now weighed much less, it would naturally error break and reduce its speed to the new lower terminal velocity." He further explained.
They decided to land the egg on a dessert rather than a mattress and the egg didn't break.
The video is currently trending on YouTube and has 18 million views.
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