Try to land Elon Musk's rockets in this addictive online game you can play right now

Elon Musk is poised to revolutionize spaceflight with his rocket company SpaceX.

The key to that revolution is reusable rockets. That's because every single rocket today will burn up or become space junk the moment it launches.

If SpaceX can launch its Falcon 9 rocket, land it on a drone ship, and tug it back to shore every time, it would bring down the cost of a launch by tens of millions of dollars - suddenly making it affordable to send humans to Mars, which is Musk's ultimate goal.

But developing that launcher has proven very tricky. Both of SpaceX's attempts this year to land a Falcon 9 upright on a drone ship in the ocean ended in fantastic explosions.

Now a user of MIT Media Lab's project "Scratch" has created a retro-style video game called SpaceX Falcon 9 Lander. The goal: Land SpaceX's rockets on a drone ship.

It's surprisingly difficult, as I learned by playing the game:

We suspect this game is nowhere near as difficult as actually landing a rocket at sea, but we have a newfound appreciation for Musk's quest. This comment on the game summed up our feelings quite well:

You have to land the rocket using only the arrow keys (gamers will know you can also use the WASD keys). The up arrow controls the rocket's thrusters; hitting the left and right arrows helps you line up the rocket to land on the drone ship.

Give the game a try below, or click over to game's home page.

But go easy on that thruster - you only have a limited amount of fuel to land.