alt Hacker NewsEveryone's focusing on the cold gas thrusters, which of course is very cool, but not actually shocking that it technically could be done (economically is another question).
But can we talk about the just casually driving straight vertical or sticking to the ceiling? I didn't think that would be technically possible for a 1000kg+ car with probably at least 2" of ground clearance.
There's presumably very limited stores of compressed gas, so you might get one hop or a couple 0-60 boosts per charge. But with electric fans, suction is a feature with much longer duration (minutes?), so you could feasibly do the batman driving on the tunnel ceiling past traffic trick.
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Saw pictures of its undercarriage on Twitter and it looks like it well have been a empty shell of a car
I very much doubt the machine we saw flying was 1000kg+. It was either MUCH lighter, supported by cleverly hidden cables, or some other trickery. The dramatic lighting isn't just for visual effect, it makes it easier to hide the reality of the demonstration.
If there was a live audience anywhere near that stage they wouldn't have been able to use thrusters to fly something that actually weighs as much as a car.
This is not actually the first time that this idea of using a fan to create downforce. It's been something that's been talked about and modeled for a long while and I think a few years ago, the McMurtury Speirling was released. That set the lap record at Laguna Seca among other achievements. The car is about a million dollars, and the fans are basically completely useless anywhere that's not a curated track (think stones, dust, wood, other FOD going through the fans).
The new roadster is obviously cool, but it looks like a practically useless vehicle for 99.9999% of the population. It's purely going to be a track princess -- with lots of extra weight for frankly pointless (but very cool) thrusters.
Really doubt that demo was on a 10k kg car. It was probably stripped down to practically a shell for that trick.
I can lift a 200 pound piece of glass with a tiny vacuum sucker. It's the atmosphere keeping that thing up there, and the 2" of ground clearance is what you see around the edge, we don't actually know what the distance is where the evacuation happens. For all you know it as a 3' x 7' plate underneath it that floats just above the surface.
I've done a lot of vacuum picking and it is surprising how large an object you can pick up with a tiny bit of surface.