There was a time not very long ago in human history when every single egg laid by a chicken was a precious mouthful, where every scrap of food was necessary to ensure you had enough energy to plow the fields and milk the cows for 14 hours a day.
Now? Well, things are a bit different now:
As host and former NASA engineer Mark Rober notes, this is a very big take on the "egg drop competition," that old middle-school standby where you have to build a contraption meant to protect an egg from a high fall. Rober wanted to break the world record on that front, but he realized that to do so he would need to go "all the way to the top...and straight to outer space."
What followed is what Rober called "the most physically, financially and mentally draining video [he] would ever attempt." Which, I mean, yeah, bro. You're sending an egg 60 miles into the air and then hoping it doesn't break on the fall down.
And yes, it did require a lot of work — three years of it, in fact!
If you don't have half an hour to watch the video (and it's pretty fun if you do), we'll throw up a spoiler here: The egg eventually makes it back to earth in one piece.
