Air Lab
Seconds, not minutes.
A cold-gas thruster is about the simplest rocket there is: open a valve and let squeezed air rush out of a nozzle. It works, and it's spectacularly thirsty. Do the maths yourself.
1 · The hover budget
Defaults: Tesla targets a car under 3,700 lb (about 1,700 kg). One report put the 600 L of air at roughly 250 kg, which is plausible at up to 10,000 psi. An exhaust speed near 590 m/s matches the "about 25 kg of air per second to hover a 1,500 kg car" estimate from engineers' back-of-envelope maths.
Full hover time
Thrust = mass flow × exhaust speed. To hover, thrust must equal the car's weight, so hover time = air mass × exhaust speed ÷ weight. (Ignoring that the car gets lighter as it burns air, which helps a little.)
2 · Every 0–60 claim, in slow motion
Five Roadster numbers race to 60 mph at constant acceleration, slowed down 10 times. The 2017 promise was 1.9 s. Thursday's timed run read 0.81 s.
| Claim | 0–60 | Average push | Distance to 60 |
|---|
60 mph = 26.82 m/s. Average acceleration = 26.82 ÷ time; 1 g = 9.81 m/s². Real launches aren't perfectly constant, so treat these as averages.
3 · Beat the Roadster
Wait for green, then tap or press Space as fast as you can. We'll tell you how fast the Rocket trim would already be going by the time you reacted.
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