Elon Musk wasn't the first to send a car into space: these young people beat him to it with a toy Ford Mustang...

The news that a Tesla Roadster is watching over us from space as if it were a satellite has gone around the world, quite literally. However, the ingenious Elon Musk was not the pioneer in sending a vehicle beyond the stratosphere and, although the protagonist of the article did not go beyond that layer, he did go very far four years ago. A daring group of young Americans had the courage to do something that today has generated great expectation: sending a car out of the Earth.

In 2014, a Ford Mustang stuck on a stick next to a balloon had the guts to take off from the earth and go beyond the troposphere. However, when this group of friends uploaded the video to YouTube, it did not receive the reception they wanted, but now, with a Tesla floating in outer space, this American sports car has gained a lot of fame.

A GoPro, a metal rod and glue strong enough to withstand a space journey are the necessary ingredients to send a toy Ford Mustang to infinity and beyond. Specifically, we find a video of barely two minutes’ duration, but it is enough to document the whole process since it lets us see every single stage the muscle car goes through at scale.

The toy car takes off without any problem thanks to a balloon that, surely, contains helium inside. Once it reaches sufficient altitude, the vehicle remains stable, observing our planet as if it were a real astronaut. Finally, the balloon bursts and falls heavily to solid ground. Thanks to a GPS installed in the structure of the “rocket”, the young scientists managed to successfully recover the little Mustang, which had landed 32 kilometres from the starting point.

Undoubtedly, it is not as spectacular as sending a Ford Mustang into outer space, but it certainly has its merit. These young people carried out this extraordinary task with the intention of celebrating the 50 years of existence of the pony car par excellence, and there was no better way than sending it beyond the troposphere so that everyone could see its greatness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpnoOmQwyP0

Four years later, Elon Musk decided to carry out a very similar mission, though with different intentions. This experiment is attracting the attention not only of motoring enthusiasts, but also of the manufacturers themselves, who are seriously considering doing something similar to what the CEO of Tesla did.

Technical specifications of this car

CoupeFord Mustang6 versions · from 62,405 €