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Tesla Roadster demo climbs a wall and catches itself mid-fall

The stunt drove the day's biggest industry reaction, including an FAA statement clarifying the vehicle does not meet the definition of an airplane.

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This brief comes from Tech Twitter’s edited headlines. The posts below are the sources grouped with the story; statements in them belong to their authors.

Aakash GuptaLead source
Tesla's new Roadster hung almost upside down 65 feet off the ground, let go, and caught itself before it landed. The only thing it used to stop the fall was air. Without the thrusters, that's a bad two seconds. From 65 feet, about six stories, a car hits the pavement doing roughly 44 mph. Nobody was inside. Elon said the car drove itself for the demo "to make sure we don't kill anyone." Watch the readout in the bottom left as it drops. It jumps to 3.1 G at 31 feet as the thrusters fire, which is about how hard you get pressed into your seat at the bottom of a big roller coaster drop. While that's happening, attitude thrusters roll the car right side up and thrusters at the corners fire straight down to set it on its wheels. The tanks hold about 250 kg of ordinary air, crammed into two…
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Aakash Gupta
Tesla just stopped a car halfway up a vertical wall, and it sat there like it was parked in a driveway. Then it kept climbing until it was hanging upside down. A Formula 1 car would need to be going well over 100 mph to stay stuck to a ceiling, and no F1 car has ever actually done it. This Roadster was barely moving. That's what makes it so strange. Race car wings work by shoving air around, and the faster you go, the harder they push you into the track. Double your speed and you get four times the grip. Park an F1 car and those wings are basically decoration. The Roadster cheats. It has fans underneath that suck the air out from under the floor, kind of like a giant shop vac. Once there's less air pushing up from below, the normal air pressure on top mashes the whole car into whatever…
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MTS
We built a game where you drive the new Tesla Roadster around a Tony Hawk-style skatepark, stringing together tricks and flying with full thruster control. Can you beat 100k points?
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Aaron Levie
So in fact we actually can get robots, flying cars, superintelligence, fast internet on planes, space travel, space colonies, orbital data centers, unlimited energy, likely cures for nearly every disease, and more all in our life times. Pretty great.
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DHH
I put $50,000 on this thing 18 months ago. Not knowing it was going to fucking fly! When it was already years "late". Because investing in whatever Elon does next is not just a great bet, but the most inspiring and fun one too.
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DHH
If your first response to the Tesla Roadster is "is that safe??", you've lost all sense of wonder. Safety is not and never was the meaning of life. I'd happily spend a few micromorts on a flying car. (Also, Tesla has a sterling safety record, so probably won't even need to).
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DHH
Starship, Starlink, Grok, and Roadster. These should all have been Sputnik moments for Europe. Triggered immediate deregulation, mobilization of capital, and ambition to catch up. And that's just the work of Elon's companies alone. But what do we get? A hollowed out EU Inc 💀
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DHH
The amount of motivated reasoning required to square SpaceX catching rockets with chopsticks and not believing those engineers could pull off the Roadster is galactic.
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How the headline evolved

  1. Tesla Roadster demo climbs a wall and catches itself mid-fall

  2. Tesla Roadster demo climbs a wall and catches itself mid-fall

  3. Tesla Roadster demo climbs a wall and catches itself mid-fall

  4. Tesla Roadster demo climbs walls and catches itself mid-fall

  5. Tesla Roadster demo climbs walls and catches itself mid-fall

  6. Tesla Roadster demo climbs walls and catches itself mid-fall

  7. Tesla Roadster demo climbs walls and catches itself mid-fall

  8. Tesla Roadster demo climbs walls and catches itself mid-fall

  9. Tesla Roadster demo catches itself mid-fall using thrusters

  10. Tesla Roadster demo catches itself mid-fall using thrusters

  11. Tesla Roadster demo uses thrusters to catch itself mid-fall

  12. Tesla Roadster hovers and catches itself in thruster demo

  13. Tesla Roadster hovers and catches itself in thruster demo

  14. Tesla demos Roadster hovering and catching itself midair

  15. Tesla demos Roadster hovering and catching itself midair

  16. Tesla demos Roadster hovering and catching itself midair

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