SpaceX Sent a Toy Banana Into Space. Now You Can Buy One — But Not in Time for the Holidays. Starship's sixth test flight carried a payload, a fake banana, as a zero-gravity indicator.
By Erin Davis
When SpaceX launched its sixth test flight of Starship on Tuesday, it included a payload for the first time—a toy banana. Now, you can buy your own plush toy banana on the SpaceX website.
But while the SpaceX shop has plenty of holiday gifts available, including the usual suspects (hats, T-shirts, water bottles, a $400 chrome Starship model, and a $175 Starship torch), the banana ($30) won't be shipped until next year.
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is known for selling unusual items on his other company's websites (Tesla has sold a cardboard Cybertruck cat litter box, short shorts, and perfume). The toy banana is something new, though it does have major significance for the company.
"Bananas have been used for quick visual comparisons for quite some time and our teammates thought it was time to bring the venerated yellow fruit to Starship," said Kate Tice, a quality engineering manager at SpaceX in a statement. "Today, we're flying Starship's first-ever physical payload, which is, as you might have guessed, a banana."
The first physical Starship payload is a banana ?? pic.twitter.com/xvjV4JSxhg
— Gav Cornwell (@SpaceOffshore) November 19, 2024
According to Space.com, the toy banana was "a stand-in for gaining the government's approval" for future Starship flights.
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"You can see our stuffed banana payload, which is doubling as today's zero gravity or zero-g indicator," Tice said. "And while this payload will remain inside the vehicle at all times and will not be deployed today, it did give us a chance to do a test run of payload approval processes with the FAA, and that's something that we're hoping to do next year if we start flying our first Starlink satellites on Starship. Godspeed, banana."
One toy banana costs $30 and will be delivered in March. The company says it's approximately 8 inches long, or about 1/247 of Starship (1,982" tall). You can buy a single banana or a whole bunch (and other gifts, here).
Today's Starship flight test has a special payload onboard – a banana! This universally-accepted measurement of scale is approximately the size of one Starlink Mini ? pic.twitter.com/5ZuoIt3EbB
— Starlink (@Starlink) November 19, 2024
