Tesla's 'flying' Roadster has a precedent in missile defense thruster tests
Tesla re-introduced its long-delayed Roadster sports car on October 15, with compressed-air thrusters enabling controlled jumps and flips. Similar thruster-based systems were tested in US missile defense projects as far back as the early 2000s.
Electric carmaker Tesla formally re-introduced its long-delayed and still unreleased Roadster sports car on October 15. Beyond an angular design reminiscent of the Cybertruck and a 0-60 mph (about 97 km/h) time of under a second, the company's surprise was that the car can "fly". This is not flying in the sense of Back to the Future Part II, but a series of controlled falls, jumps and flips. A comparable technical approach was used more than two decades ago in US missile defense experiments.
How the Roadster does it
The maneuvers rely on two high-pressure air tanks and ten nozzles placed around the car that release compressed air to move and stabilize it. Tesla says the Roadster can refill the tanks by itself. The full thruster setup is available only on the Rocket trim; the Thruster trim has thrusters only at the rear, and the Performance trim has none. Tesla also states that the thrusters are not approved for public road use.
The missile defense precedent
In 2004, US defense company Lockheed Martin won a $760 million contract from the US Missile Defense Agency to build a Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV), described as the first system able to destroy multiple ballistic missile threats and decoys with a single launch. The system carries several smaller vehicles designed to collide with missiles and destroy them, and it uses thrusters to change direction and orientation quickly.
The idea of one system taking out several missiles is older, dating to the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as the "Star Wars" program. Footage said to show Lockheed Martin's MKV may also be linked to that program, since Lockheed Martin was only founded in 1995. Lockheed Martin and another contractor, Raytheon, worked on separate development tracks until the original MKV project was retired in 2009 because of military budget cuts.
The key difference
Tesla insists the Roadster uses cold-gas thrusters running on compressed air, so no fuel is burned. A 2008 Lockheed Martin press release described "hot-fire tests" for the MKV, suggesting part of the system burned fuel for propulsion. Neither system is currently owned by anyone.
