Launching from the Moon

Today Lucy, Alaina, and I worked on Launching various materials to the yellow hook on the wall. Our budget was 4.7 million. Each launch costed $120,000 and each failure costed $22,000, due to loss of fuel. Our very first launch was just the straw and we only used 1 balloon. It was successful. Next we tried to launch a blue foam ball, and it failed. After that, all of ur launches failed, and we ended up not spending even close to 4.7 million. We used balloons to get up to the orange hook.

Some questions I have:
Why did sometimes the launch go about 12 inches, when 2 fully blown up balloon's we're connected?
How many balloons would it take to launch ALL the materials up the the "moon a.k.a the orange hook?"