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Tesla Roadster flight demo prompts response from the FAA

The thruster-equipped Roadster reveal dominated the day's tech conversation, drawing an FAA statement, Florida officials weighing in on road rules, and a playable fan recreation.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Florida can make Tesla's flying Roadster street legal. The second the tires leave the road, though, federal rules say it has to stay 1,000 feet above a town like The Villages unless it's taking off or landing. Every Roadster hop is nothing but taking off and landing. DeSantis joked the car could at least leapfrog golf carts in The Villages, a retirement town with more than 50,000 of them. Tesla only talks about short hops, and every lift in the demo lasted a few seconds. So each flight is one launch and one touchdown with nothing in between. On paper, the FAA's altitude rule never gets a chance to apply. The rest of the rulebook does, and none of it belongs to Florida. Federal law gives the US government "exclusive sovereignty" over American airspace. States get to register the car and…
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How the headline evolved

  1. Tesla Roadster flight demo prompts response from the FAA

  2. Tesla Roadster flight demo prompts response from the FAA

  3. Tesla Roadster flight demo prompts response from the FAA

  4. Tesla Roadster thruster demo flies, drawing an FAA response

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