Elon Musk’s Stuffed Earth Sold Out Before SpaceX Rocket Took Flight
Elon Musk's Stuffed Earth Sold Out Before SpaceX Rocket Took Flight
(Bloomberg) -- First it was electric cars, then flamethrowers. Now, Elon Musk has proven adept at selling plushy planets.
The billionaire founder of SpaceX tweeted on Friday that the rocket company made a late addition of a “super high tech zero-g indicator” to the inaugural launch of Crew Dragon, its first craft built to fly humans. He attached a photo showing a miniature toy Earth sitting in a seat next to a mannequin resembling an astronaut.
The stuffed Earth is sold by Celestial Buddies, a website run by a New York City-based apparel designer. The site’s creator has written she didn’t know the plush character would participate in the launch, but figured “something was afoot” during a flurry of orders in the 48 hours prior to SpaceX’s launch on Saturday. By the time the company’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center around 2:49 a.m. in Florida, all inventory was sold out.
“We apologize for our current lack of Earths,” Celestial Buddies’ creator wrote on the site. “We have never had one of our products launched into space before, and we were taken totally by surprise. Thus, our reorder will not be in our warehouse until the end of April.”
The high-profile free publicity keeps coming. Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut who’s resided at the International Space Station since December, has shared several photos of her new companion.
Politico reported earlier Wednesday that Celestial Buddies had sold out of the toy.
To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Trudell in New York at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Tony Robinson, Chester Dawson
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