The Tesla Roadster’s launch day has arrived, perhaps literally.
The second-generation sports car is set to be unveiled Thursday night at a SpaceX rocket testing facility in McGregor, Texas. The choice of venue is due to the nature of the event, which is expected to include a demonstration of the car’s ability to fly, to some extent.
Elon Musk has promised that the Roadster will be offered with an optional SpaceX cold gas thruster package that uses compressed air to improve its acceleration and allow it to lift off of the round in a a hover. Just how high and for how long is yet to be revealed.
The event was originally planned for Oct. 1, but postponed due to weather. Tesla acquired a temporary flight restriction (TFR) encompassing a three-mile diameter circle around the facility from the FAA from Sep. 18 to Oct. 2 that extended to an altitude of 10,000 feet that was listed for “hazards” but never publicly explained why. Speculation was that it was either related to vehicle flight test safety, or aimed at keeping spying aircraft away from the facility. New evidence suggests it was more about the latter.
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SpaceX got another TFR this week, but it was just for Oct. 14 and only went up 5,000 feet. There was nothing on the docket for Oct. 15. at the time this story was published. If the Oct. 14 TFR was related to the Roadster, it might have been to keep a final rehearsal event under wraps, rather than safety-related, otherwise it would’ve extended into today.
In fact, there is. SpaceX has a blanket TFR in effect for the entire year for “Special Security Reasons” that doesn’t extend to three miles, but covers the facility up to 2,000 feet, which is surely still far higher than the Roadster will be able to reach.
While no patents or designs for the thruster pack have leaked, by our not particularly rigorous calculations, basic physics indicates that the car would need about 600 pounds of compressed air to sustain any flight for even 10 seconds, plus the weight of the tanks. So you’re likely looking at about 1,000 pounds of equipment and half that for a five-second burst, which wouldn’t get it very high during a takeoff, flight, and safe landing cycle. This assumes the system uses an onboard electric compressor to fill the tank with atmospheric air between uses.
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It won’t be long until we find out how it really works. The livestream for the event is scheduled to start at 7:55 p.m. Central Time on Tesla’s X account and it should be quite the show. Elon Musk posted on X today “New Roadster is beyond movies, beyond imagination, beyond human, yet still made by humans on Earth.”
