And now for Elon Musks next trick.

The billionaire entrepreneur is on the verge of attempting an audacious maneuver that could make his next space flight notable not just for the takeoff, but for the landing.

Typically rocket boosters have their few minutes in the fiery, 3-2-1 spotlight, propelling the rest of the stages into the great beyond, before petering out and crashing unceremoniously into the sea.

But Musk thinks that ditching one of the most expensive parts of the rocket is an unnecessary waste.

So SpaceX, his startup space company, has designed a rocket he hopes will be able to launch, then return to Earth, touching down softly on the bullseye of a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

Musk, the founder of Paypal and Tesla Motors, said that the odds of pulling off such an unprecedented feat are not greatperhaps 50 percent at best. But if SpaceX is able to one day stick the landing of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket with consistency, it would mark a significant advancement for space flight.

For years, Musk has been working on a way to land and reuse rockets. In two previous launches this year, the company completed soft landings in the ocean, briefly hovering over the water before toppling over.

Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds then tipped over and exploded, Musk said during a forum at MIT in October. Its as tall as a 14-story building. When a 14-story building falls over, its quite a belly flop.

On its next trip to resupply the International Space Station, scheduled for Jan. 6, SpaceX aims to land the rocket on a barge 300 feet long by 170 feet wide, using its engine thrust to slow down from a velocity of about 3,000 mph. In tests, the company has practiced launching the rocket hundreds to thousands of feet into the air and then reeling it back down slowly, as if tethered to kite string before landing square on the landing pad.

But stabilizing such a large rocket coming back from a great distance at high speeds isnt easy like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm, Musk said.

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Wonkblog: Elon Musks next trick: Landing a rocket upright on a barge in the middle of the sea