When I saw the video of the Tesla Roadster, I was speechless. My brain said this had to be AI or SI generated video that was not reality, and this didn’t happen. However, just like Elon Musk’s SpaceX catching the booster rocket after use, this Tesla Roadster reveal was very real and incredibly amazing.
I’ve watched the video more than a few times and I understand the concept of using pressurized air as explained by Elon Musk and several engineers in subsequent explanations. However, it remains stunning to think about.
While the rest of the western world is seemingly stuck in a political battle about artificial intelligence, pitting advanced technology against the socialist and heavily unionized interests who will be impacted by it, the U.S. continues to lead the way on innovation and technology at a scale now visibly represented by this stunning Tesla Roadster’s capabilities.
Sure, it’s extreme, and there’s not likely to be a consumer-friendly version of it despite production scheduled for next year, but beyond the over-the-top incredible technology that makes a vehicle do these seemingly science defying stunts, my brain started thinking about how this technology could make vehicles safer.
When we think about collision warning and avoidance systems that are already present in cars, and we think about these specifically new capabilities on display, it doesn’t take long before you wonder if the commercial application of this technology might end up being incorporated into vehicle safety options.
Unintentionally driving off a cliff in a vehicle that can detect, stabilize, optimize a travel vector and land itself is no longer just an out-there mental exercise. We can easily imagine a future where the technology revealed in the Tesla Roadster will be in some form of safety features. Just a few days ago the thought was never even contemplated.
This is remarkable and the engineering teams at Tesla should be commended for pushing the envelope and creating things that go beyond our imagination. Congratulations to Elon Musk, the folks at Tesla and all of the incredible people who put their time, effort and energy into these accomplishments.
This is what unleashed American innovation can deliver. I think it is awesome.
I’m a retired aerospace engineer and I helped develop, analyze, and evaluate lots of advanced technologies. Lots.
Mine brain cannot completely process what I have seen here.
Reagan star wars was working stuff like this at least as far back as 40 years ago.
And I suspect Reagan pushed it as aggressively as he did because it was already happening.
Turbonique built these in the 60’s when engineers just had sliderules and drafting tables. They were incorporated into standard rear axle housings.
Certainly Musk fanboys will claim that his form of releasing compressed gas for thrust is “sustainable” but just like with EVs, no one will ask from whence the energy came to compress it in the first place.
“In the early 1960s, you could purchase through mail-order several rocket-powered kits. The Florida company was called Turbonique. If it sounds benign, it was far from it. Drag racers, go-kart enthusiasts, boat racers, and motorcyclists were all recipients of Turbonique’s insanity. The most potent of Turbonique’s kits was the bolt-on Drag Axle, with an instant 1,300 hp.“
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/mail-order-1300hp-rocket-engine-for-your-car/
I think that in the very near term, we’ll see the Tesla flying car used in some films. It would’ve been so awesome for Sean Connery or Roger Moore to have had one of these in a Bond film.
Think of it like the RCS system on shuttle and say the Boeing Starliner (where they jets didn’t fire per the computer control). The tech was even used pre-Apollo… I believe it was Gemini when a jet locked into firing, sending Neil Armstrong into a tumble with 10+ G-forces where he had to figure out how to counter the firing jet (while tumbling) to stabilize the craft, then to shut it down. Shutting it down might be easier now with all the controls being digital, depending on the type of failure.
I see this is a clear innovation using the control jets on spacecraft (and landing rockets) with the capture rocket, as it applies to adding it to a modern roadster. It’s a rich man’s toy or a cool engineering concept until the tech and fuel logistics costs reach commercially acceptable levels… just like Tesla vehicles and capturing returning launch vehicles.
If someone keeps working on the tech and the costs, it’ll be common like the SpaceX return rockets in 10-20 yrs.
That’s my guess…
You’re not the only one.
Without reading further, I do not understand how the car stayed on the ramp, when it was stationary and upside down.
“Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic”
Elon Musk is the 21st century Thomas Edison.
Or maybe Nicolai Tesla.
Nikola Tesla
I wonder if the US Govt still holds the original Tesla patents??
Any patents expired. you may be thinking of his notes materials which were collected after his passing.
Or maybe just a frontman.
Edison was a hack. Less interested in the science and more in the profit potential.
I really do not understand the overinflated view of Musk. His engineers have lots of advanced design tools.
What he has that no one in the 60’s had is immense indemnification from lawsuits.
I can’t stop thinking about the Jetson’s. Orbit City could happen next year.
Gas displacement propulsion isn’t the kind of tech to levitate anything long term.
Firearms are gas displacement thrust devices. They use combustion to create the gas which rapidly expands to launch projectiles. Burning rockets do the same thing. “Air guns” the same but based on stored potential energy in a compressed form to be released rapidly.
What you saw was a massive air-rocket propulsion demonstration. Amazing but not non-destructive and not non-dangerous. Don’t get caught up in the awe and don’t plan to take a ride in one without a g-suit and having give through a complete physical and some training. I don’t imagine there was a driver in that machine.
‘MERICA Baby!
*btw, the China stumping by YouTube’s recommender on this was all too glorious. Apparently, the algorithms assumed they’d get here first…but all I saw was a lot of lo-fi, green-screened slop that Hanna Barbara wouldn’t even approve.
Well, I’ll be the negative voice here:
The car did not fly.
It used thrust to propel it on the runway curve to be airborne and used what (ailerons?) to flip while using reverse thrusters to lower to the ground.
To fly is to be independent in the air via thrust, enabling forward, sideways and turning.. This did not happen.
What did happen was the Bankers were awed and more willing to invest in a technology that will not be made, not even in 2028 as scheduled because the actual phase of airborne flight control does not yet exist.
Another scam by technocrats to finance visions and promises.
So a rocket doesn’t fly when it uses thrusters or boosters?
I saw that car dive straight at a lineup of vehicles including a semi and unlike Evil Kinevil thrust up and over them, go a side roll, and pull off a safe landing.
You’re a difficult person to impress. What have you done?
What the writer you are referring to here has done is irrelevant.
You think he wasn’t impressed? He was. But he hasn’t done anything. Trying to use word definitions to create an argument against reality is what we call pedantic and little else.
Flight in the sense of the air foil design works because it creates a low pressure surface which is different from the pressure from the pressure on the underside of a wing. it’s bouyancy. but it’s also a pressure difference at play.
It’s true that this is gas displacement propulsion just as rockets of all sorts do from combustion, to those water rocket toys (love those so much!) to what we saw there. You could even say those low-rider bouncing their cars are using a similar method of propulsion.
Personally, I wanted to see air jacks like on the Speed Racer Mach 5 car. That’s some nostalgia there.
The maneuvering thrusters were real. The demonstration just did a barrel roll. I have little doubt they could also spin the car about and land facing the opposite direction as well. Less dramatic but more practical looking.
I want to see that to managing parking in impossible places. No more parallel parking.
Noisy as hell I imagine but it could work.
Still…if it was real…it was pretty d impressive.
Agreed. I suspect it was real. But not what it was presented to be.
Impressive control…thrust is rasy….control isnt
Indeed.
I remember sometime in the 1980s seeing some very impressive videos of reagan star wars “brilliant pebbles” vehicles doing this very sort of thing.
Thrusters I think were fixed but actuation, like you note here, seemed like much more of a reaction control task than a propulsion task, though propulsion was obviously part of it. And those “vehicles over nets demos” were moving much more impressively quickly around the volume than we see here.
Indeed. Your take here is very consistent with what I see here. This “reveal” pretends to be something it isn’t. People read a lot of what they want into what they see here – both about musk and the “car.”
That being said, Sundance makes a good point here about some possibly realistic applications that could come from the basic premise of using selective short-term thrust on cars for things related to safety such as collision avoidance or mitigation.
“Air bags and crush zones? Hold my beer!”
Yes how anout a mneumatic collision cushion that prevents not only hitting the car in front but also the car behind from hitting you! Brakes help but thrusters could repel. I feel bad for motorcyclists.
“Another scam by technocrats to finance visions and promises.”
and, to continue creating an vacuum of intellectual property and capital shutting out a free market for innovators and engineers.
Even the Wright brothers eventually ran out of gas…used for combustion…to turn a crankshaft…etc.
And they called him a bleddy Souf Effrican!
They hounded him
They tried to destroy him.
But he triumphed!
Oh you must be referring to frontman transhumanist musk.
Crazy…is it really real? Am I a dumbass for even asking that?
Thinking I’ll hang on to the ’02 Tundra for a few more years….
I see this technology, like you said, used as a safety system but not in cars necessarily but airplanes.
Imagine an airplane or helicopter crashing and then these air-rockets take control in the last 30 seconds and stabilize and land the plane…. Just wow!!
Or commercial air collision avoidance in the last minute.
Or missile avoidance on warplanes the just pushes the plane to the side just as the missile gets too near.
Or, an APC landing in the middle of a war zone straight from a plane, no parachute.
Or… no more long landing strips for airplanes. Just come in and quick air-jet landing in a tiny spot. No need to learn how to and a plane anymore.
Or, no need for large wings for initial lift and landing, but only swept back wings for high speed! The air-rocket will get the plane to take off and land.
Or, satellite maneuvering jets that only need air to replenish the tank. No fuel.
Or…. Or…. Or….
I’m still stuck on ain’t no way…..
Do a search on reagan star wars brilliant pebbles and you will see some good relevant demos.
Yeah, we definitely have analogous capabilities zipping around space right now with this capability. Discussion of this kind of thing was an all the rage public thing throughout the 1980s. All over magazines and such.
Then it stopped.
During that time – the era of reagan star wars – satellite systems were all the rage as well. Then it all stopped. At least the public coverage of it all stopped. My guess is that not only did the ACTUAL work behind all those intensely-cool projects not only NOT stop, it intensified … as it went dark. None of this is new. But, as we see, some of it is making its way into the light of day.
I was a young engineer in the early 80s and I was very interested and clued in all those things that were happening then.
Or an elevator in free-fall. you would no longer need to carefully time your jump just before impact.
Air is.hard to get in space
I think that the flying/hovering capabilities of this amazing car will not be able to last very long — notice they did not talk about this.
I have no idea what it is; but I doubt those capabilities will allow one to fly several miles, say from home to work; but it sure could be effective to get out of a traffic jam.
Remember that it always was, and always will be, about Mars. That is, in large part, what this is about
….lolol….do tell
I was SpaceX employee number four and the guy who took Elon to Russia to buy converted ICBMs to do a private mission to Mars. When the Russian said ‘nyet’, we started SpaceX. From the very first time that Elon approached me, it was to ‘make humanity a multiplanetary species’. For 25 years now, when people ask me why he does what he does, I have been saying ‘settling Mars’. I left because I didn’t believe him, but yet this is his motivation. Tesla: driving on Mars and robots to build the civilization (instead of slave labor), Boring Company – not making freeways underground but boring civilizations underground on Mars. XAI – the intelligence compute offload that runs the legions of robots. A Tesla flying car is a prelude to Mars transportation. There is much, much more. Crazy or not, this is what he is doing. Its all about Mars. Period.
https://www.powerspod.com/the-man-who-took-elon-to-russia-why-his-new-company-phantom-is-spacexs-unfinished-business-with-j/
Yeah, imo musk is a completely fraudulent fake made-up character. An actor and classic frontman being used by both sides in the ubiquitous war playing out right now. And, there are multiple versions of “him” and “he” simply does what he’s told.
I also think the “powers-that-be” learned what they could do, what they could get away with and what the public liked to see when they launched the similar Howard Hughes character decades ago. They are expert at this kind of manipulative and deceptive thing by now.
People can be so gullible and that’s being used against us in big ways these days. Be careful.
Same thing with Steve Jobs. A complete useful myth.
A marvel comic character. People LOVE to see “real-life” marvel characters … so that is precisely what they get.
I’m thinking the moon is more relevant. After what is already in orbit, of course.
Actually, the Mars fantasy and this fantastically impractical hypercar are both examples of fantastic hype, Musk’s stock-in-trade.
That’s what this is about.
Neither will amount to much beyond the hype.
There may eventually be a tiny number of the hypercars built and sold to juvenile males in the elite economic strata, with the versions intended for public roads lacking the 10kpsi nitrogen thruster system*.
(*Good for one short thruster burst event with a high probability of causing spectacular wreckage, and requiring most of a day connected to super-expensive specialized lab-grade equipment operated by Tesla engineers to charge).
The Mars fantasy will amount to even less, beyond the hype.
“…hypercars built and sold to juvenile males in the elite economic strata…”
Juvenile males coveting flashy new “sports” cars, range from about 3 years old through middle age.
Witness the gray hairs behind the wheel of many of the new Corvettes on the road styled to imitate the hypercar look.
The public roadways, traffic, and traffic regulations are antithetical to “sport”. Yet the fantasy persists, kept alive by the auto industry, media, and juvenile males of all ages.
It has been observed that the “sports” car fantasy is that of a powerful agile predator, but law enforcement is the real predator on the road – aggressively driven sports cars are the prey.
When I look at a ‘vette or similar design vehicle, I see a fast-running prey instance that will submarine under a higher-profile vehicle in a high-speed clash, decapitating the occupants of the low-profile “sports” car.
Run gazelle, run. Johnny Law may be behind you.
Or maybe for some of us, driving a nice handling, quickly accelerating car puts a little joy in another day’s drive to work. Just starting my car makes me smile when I hear that wonderful rumble. I highly recommend starting the day with a smile.
Then, if I’m fortunate enough to be first in line to get on the freeway, I smile again when I look in the mirror and think “see ya later” to those behind me as I waste no time getting to 65 mph.
I have no interest in driving irresponsibly because my contribution to the insurance industry is high enough.
What’s scary is some other drivers. You know, the ones who see driving as something to do while texting with friends. Or the ones who aren’t having a good time like me and just seem to be mad at everyone.
It doesn’t bother me when companies develop technology for juvinille males in the elite economic strata. They can pay for the development of a technology, which will become cheaper over time and open up access to everyone. Consider ACL surgery for knees. A generation ago, a torn ACL was an instant career ender for an athlete. Then , in the late 90’s Terrel Davis tore his ACL, missed a year, and came back. He wasn’t as good and retired, but at least in his after career, he is able to walk. Today Patrick Maholms tore his ACL, missed part of a season, and is now back playing. The developments in sports medicine are funded by the motifation to keep elite athlets healthy, but the technology and techniques become cheap and available to any amatuer jogger.
Will there be flying cars all over the place because of this? No. Will people find other uses for the technology? I’d say yes, absolutely.
As for the Mars fantasy, it has already paid off giving us the most reliable and cheap Falcon 9. (708 launches 99.58% success, 9 boosters have flown more than 30 times). How many of those flights would have been unaffordable before Falcon 9? We can use the 10,300 Starlink satellites for remote internet access. Soon they will upgrade to V3, with more bandwith and video capability everywhere. Next, data center computing in orbit using solar power. Longer term, orbital manufacturing and moon mining. Then , when the space infrastructure is ready, Mars.
Almost word-for-word, the same criticisms made of “those magnificent men in their flying machines,” pre-WWI.
after watching the unveiling of the Roadster realized, we are now living in a different world and we have the choice of working forward and embracing new ways of looking at things, or stay frozen in the old that results in things we are seeing today in France and Italy.
Really is a stark contrast in the two worlds and that image of the fanciful city while sitting high above the slums is the perfect metaphor of the difference, humans creating and reaching for the stars or stay just one step above animals.
This has been a really strange day weighing the two visions, flying cars and historical France on fire while aging hippies protest no kings while politicians of both stripes scream for people to get out and vote as if this is still the 1970’s and politics is just the same old game.
But isn’t the disastrous europe we are seeing right now very largely the direct result of taking what was a great place in many respects and “embracing new ways of looking at things” ?
The first thing that went through my head (and I quote Buzz Lightyear), that’s not flying, that is falling, with style. But still amazing!! I honestly was most impressed with how it clung to the road upside down!
THAT – sticking to the ramp upside-down… is what fascinates me.
Air pressure??
No, suction.
As Elon said “This car really sucks”!
“my brain started thinking about how this technology could make vehicles safer.”
In all the hype about “advanced” this or that, do remember the car has no mind of its own and does not govern safety. The day that the car does the thinking and not you is another day where one has given their safety and security away, from individuality.
The globalist agenda funding trillion dollar monopolies like Musks’ is centered upon depopulation and high density urbanization.
Electric vehicles are a transition out of unlimited-distance personal transportation (gas/diesel) and into centrally controlled limited distance fuel sources (electric grid).
Flying cars are part of their new world order Utopia
Much respect and well done to the entire Tesla Team.
Now for the “flux capacitor”!
It’s a different take on the speed racer mach-5 but that was my first thought. Second thought was what a driver might experience if there was a driver in it at all.
This is a gimmick above all gimmicks. Nice to know it exists, but to what end? I can imagine military uses. I can imagine it in action movies. I can almost imagine it in anti-theft/vandalism situations.
It’s a heavy machine with a huge distribution of compressed gas. That amount of force requires incredible materials managing incredible pressures. The amount of energy used to compress the gas is enormous by any estimation. This is a 1-off burst for sure. For sure on the liftoff and the controlled landing and the mid-flight guidance. It’s all tremendous.
How long to recharge? How much power is needed? what’s the capacity of onboard power? Would a second charge kill the remaining battery power? not hard to imagine.
And the explosive and destructive potential of that gas system is enormous. Very very dangerous.
It is nitrogen, not flammable, it’s storage tank is a carbon fiber tank & rather large.
I tried to find the link of the designer giving someone a demo of it’s capabilities but do not remember where I caught the link at & there are about 1K+ yt videos on it now so kinda lost in the ocean volume to find the needle again.
Right now recharge is about 2 hours but working to get down to less than 1/2 hour to recharge nitrogen system @ home.
I have seen use of industrial nitrogen systems for packaging individual bags of chips & nuts… it is a rather small system the size of a clothes closet & most of it was tank… that was almost 30 years ago now.
This is a similar interview with motor trend
“It’s a heavy machine …”
Oh, really? How much does it weigh?
I honestly beleive this is proof.of.concept of.being able.to soft land any object in any condition. Consider an escape pod bent and broken coming.off a fighter jet tumbles then rights itself then lands no parachute to shoot at.
There is no market for a 5 second flying car
You already prove its inherent value with this comment by referring to it as “a flying car.” Mission accomplished. Good job.
Thank you, Sundance, for the encouraging article.
Except that I remember all the really crude and mean things Elon said during the H1B Visa fights.
Hard to reconcile..
Yes, Elon is gifted with brilliance… and challenged with ego.
Musk is an oligarch, sucking up all the available capital and intellectual property into his massive monopolies.
There are tens of thousands of engineers in America who can do what Musk’s teams do if the free market capital and legal protections that made America great, were made available again.
Musk is a fake marvel cartoon character.
Yes, Mr Musk said very vulgar and crude things during his H-1B tantrum.
It appears Musk has recalibrated his public persona… however, being a chameleon who can change his spots at will, makes it equally hard to forecast what he might do or say today…much less tomorrow.
Turbonique in 1962
“Turbonique delivered the rocket cars that Detroit was afraid to build”
https://www.hagerty.com/media/maintenance-and-tech/turbonique-delivered-the-rocket-cars/
Is everyone forgetting when Musk built the Gigafactory in China, handing over all of Tesla’s vehicle and manufacturing IP?
“The Alef design utilizes hub motors for land travel, while for flight it incorporates eight motor-controller-propeller systems providing distributed electric propulsion, covered by a continuous mesh upper surface to allow airflow during vertical flight.
The Model A employs an unusual transition between vertical and forward flight modes. Once airborne, the vehicle tilts sideways, such that the right and left sides of the car become the top and bottom wings of a biplane for forward flight. At the same time, the spherical cabin rotates and swivels sideways so that the occupants are still sitting upright and facing forward in the direction of travel.”
https://alef.aero/
Small minds will never “get it!” Amazing technology here.
Ask Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning what happened to their technology.
Indeed.
But that’s apparently just ancient irrelevant history now, look at all the great stuff musk does.
And how about musk’s pure bs wealth origin story? Complete nonsense, bought lock, stock and barrel by most people.
Au contraire. Small minds ALWAYS “get it.”
Babylon Bee had a spit take worthy headline about it yesterday: “Tiger Woods Unimpressed With Roadster As He’s Flipped Dozens Of Vehicles”
Or, “Tiger wonders where this latest miracle from musk was when he needed it?”
This is awesome! And I think and believe this is just the beginning of an amazing reveal of technology that……I believe we have had…..maybe not fully developed but have had…..and are now revealing to the public.
The internet was not newly developed when we finally got access to it….it had been in use and developed years before they let the public in on it…..I believe the same here.
What really intrigues me is what and how we will advance medically…in the health field….hopefully surpassing and actually enabling us to do away with Big Pharma and the consumption of their so called fixes upon fixes for issues they themselves create and fix….which perpetually brings them big money at the expense of our health and our lives.
Never again needing a pill, or a shot, or some other thing that you must put into you…….rather…..maybe……going and laying down in a “medbed” that surrounds your body, scans it, finds the issues……and repairs the body back to full health using frequencies and vibrations….as well as light to enable the body to heal itself….without the poisons and methods they use now to enrich themselves…again…at our expense.
I used to think medbeds were conspiracy theory…..which is why I started looking into it…..because all conspiracy theories seem to come true now days! Not long after getting into this topic……amazingly…..President Trump brings it up by name!!!
Disclosure…..is not all about aliens and spacecraft…..it’s also about technology and other information being revealed to us!
It’s an amazing time to be alive!
NASA IT guy here. I’m not a propulsion engineer, but I’m an engineer exposed to propulsion “awareness” as it’s used to fly non-aerodynamic vehicles related to ISS and launches. My take is that this is an innovation of space vehicle maneuvering “jets” like those that failed on the Boeing Starliner a year plus ago with the roadster styled car.
Having all those “engine” streams at key locations on the vehicle firing in coordination provides attitude and altitude control. Computer control coordinates the thrusts based on the 3D physics of maneuvering the vehicle in the desired attitudes and directions… same thing as rendezvous and docking of spacecraft, only with gravitiy… same things as the rocket return capture Sundance mentioned.
Natural next step of the existing technology. Won’t be usable on the road a.k.a. Speed Racer Mach 5 change in motilaty type on the fly, at least not for a long time. But it may allow eventual helicopter type flying OR roadster action somewhat soon.
My hunch is the key limiting factor on the tech near term will be, just like the EV, fuel energy density constraints. If you put that on a Tesla, how heavy is that car? How much extra weight does the new propulsion fuel add per mile traveled or 100 ft altitude achieved?
But the cool thing is to realize this: everyone had the same concerns when Elon launched Tesla. Everyone had the same “wow!” reaction to the returning rocket capture. Everyone except Elon. This is just that. So… maybe 10-20 yrs until it’s like the high end Tesla cars now. Or maybe it has no real practical use other than “Look at me, I’m rich or spent all my money” flex.
But it is very, very cool!
To me it looks like the SDI (Star wars) missle interceptors.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Tbn95ziEOD0?si=M-R6j28_1HApP0um
I can see jump car road racing happening 😉
When I first watched this I said: “Meet George Jetson!!” Back then it was science fiction, now it’s a reality.
Reddit is now banning posts about the Tesla roadster as “Political” content.
Why does the video look so FAKE.
Similar to the Tesla truck they sent into space. Elon “It must be real as it looks so fake.”
Yeah, these guys are definitely world-beaters at making fake videos.
But this one imo is real. Because what we ACTUALLY see here is not that big a deal. But what we are SUPPOSED to THINK we are seeing here is THE story. It’s deception. And in THAT regard this a massive success. Oh, well.