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Transportation Businesses

Is Elon Musk Serious About Building A Flying Tesla? (inc.com) 107

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-needing-roads dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Inc: It's inevitable, really. Musk's two largest companies, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, make electric cars and rockets.... Musk tweeted about a "SpaceX option package" for the next Tesla Roadster in June of last year. The upgrade was described as including about "10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly..."

Musk then hinted even more strongly at the possibility of a flying Tesla this week when he retweeted a GIF of a flying DeLorean from "Back to the Future," saying: "The new Roadster will actually do something like this." He then went on to describe how small SpaceX air thrusters will be used to essentially turn a Tesla Roadster into a hovercraft or perhaps... something with an even higher vertical range.
Two years ago Musk insisted flying cars were noisy and annoyed the people on the ground -- although you could argue this shows he'd been thinking about the mechanics of flying cars, and when it's an appropriate time to use rocket thrusters.

Inc's headline? "Elon Musk Has Plans For a Tesla / SpaceX Flying Car (And He's Serious. Probably.)"
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Is Elon Musk Serious About Building A Flying Tesla? More

Is Elon Musk Serious About Building A Flying Tesla?

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  • They should dust of David Hasselhoff to introduce it

  • Are you serious? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by umafuckit ( 2980809 ) on Sunday January 13, 2019 @07:54AM (#57953618)
    This is Elon Musk trolling for attention as usual. Of course he's not going to build a flying Tesla, why is this even on Slashdot?

    • ...thrower?

      Personally his sounds like another marketing gimmick because he needs vulture capital again to make up for his production shortfalls.

      I personally think he's getting a lot done, but as a hypothetical investor I don't feel he's in a very stable place right now and definitely a high risk investment at this point in time.

      But hey, I would love to be proven wrong. He's pushed forward *TWO* whole industries that had been complacent for a long time (battery powered cars date to the 1910s-1920s!!!), and h

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      why is this even on Slashdot?

      It's been obvious for a long time ago that slashdot is paid to shill Musk and Tesla.

      • Re:Are you serious? (Score:4)

        by zugmeister ( 1050414 ) on Sunday January 13, 2019 @02:13PM (#57954892)
        Yeah, what self respecting geek would ever be interested in really fast electric vehicles that can (sorta) drive themselves, with ROCKETS ADDED!?!?!
        What a silly idea.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          Yeah, what self respecting geek would ever be interested in really fast electric vehicles that can (sorta) drive themselves, with ROCKETS ADDED!?!?!
          What a silly idea.

          Those of us interested in driving.

          You can make a car fast in a straight line easily enough, but that won't make it fun to drive.

          Seeing as we're talking about fun in cars, I'll quote rally legend, Colin McRae:

          Straights roads are for fast cars, corners are for fast drivers

          Having driven a Tesla, they're heavy and wallowy in the turns, they might be able to accelerate fast but you'll need to brake all of that off to take a corner at pedestrian speeds (otherwise you'll be going into a barrier). An MX-5 might not be as fast in a straight line, but you'll be able to ca

          • The original post in this thread was asking "why is this even on Slashdot?". I was responding sarcastically to that question. As far as I'm concerned really fast self driving electric cars are geek awesome. How would you make them more awesome?
            Everything is awesomer if you add rockets to it!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      He first mentioned it at least 6 months ago, but people in the media knows that the public didn't remember it the first time -- so they take advantage of letting the story blow up again as if it's a new thing and the (slightly more mundane) details aren't known.

      The Tesla Roadster 2 with optional SpaceX package will sport cold-gas thrusters.. with the compressed gas tanks occupying space that would otherwise be reserved for backseats. The purpose of the cold-gas thrusters is to extra thrust intended to give

    • Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday January 13, 2019 @01:24PM (#57954684)

      This is Elon Musk trolling for attention as usual. Of course he's not going to build a flying Tesla, why is this even on Slashdot?

      He was also not going to build "a boring company".

      Elon Musk says a lot of nutty things. The thing that makes him really unusual is he'll carry through on some of them.

    • Mod parent up.
      There are so many problems with a 'flying car' that it's not practical to build, and the majority of those problems are safety concerns, mainly safety of people on the ground. You could never fly one over populated areas unless there was a failsafe system that more or less guaranteed it couldn't crash into crowds of people or into buildings; unless someone cracks the secret of antigravity technology, it ain't happenin'.

      ..although I just came up with a bizzarre idea for that: how about a gig

  • Been done (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday January 13, 2019 @08:27AM (#57953670) Homepage

    People have already tried strapping rockets to cars. It usually doesn't end well, unless the outcome you wanted was some awesome high-speed camera footage and a totaled car. Also, rocket engines tend to use lots of fuel, and once you run out of fuel, gravity takes over with predictable results.

    So yeah, unless Elon Musk is getting into the business of expensive car demolition (well, he did send a car off into space), I don't see the practicality in this. Sounds like he's just trolling for attention, again.

    • People have already tried strapping rockets to cars. It usually doesn't end well, unless the outcome you wanted was some awesome high-speed camera footage and a totaled car..

      That was Mythbusters, not engineers.

    • People have already tried strapping rockets to cars. It usually doesn't end well, unless the outcome you wanted was some awesome high-speed camera footage and a totaled car.

      Last time my friend tried this in 1984, he got himself trapped in the 8th dimension.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rjr162 ( 69736 )

      Maybe they'll find a way to tame the rocket and use it more like a turbine engine like Plymouth did (and the one motorcycle Jay Leno has that uses a turbine from a helicopter)

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car

      • Maybe they'll find a way to tame the rocket and use it more like a turbine engine like Plymouth did (and the one motorcycle Jay Leno has that uses a turbine from a helicopter)

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car

        The problem is it's not so easy to quickly change the power and direction of the thrust. You inevitably need some kind of thrust vectoring system adding cost, complexity, and lowering reliability. Also Jays bike is known for heat damaging vehicles behind it. Though it would be cool in a movie, frying people as you throw them back 20 feet through a shop window tends to result in annoying lawsuits. Also gaining supermans power of flight, without the invulnerability, leads to only a short enjoyment of fl

  • Nothing more.

    This is so impractical from the certification perspective that it's not even funny - I can't see it happening for years simply through trying to get permission from the FAA/NTSB to even try the idea.

    I think this is Mr, Musk just trying to stay relevant and being talked about in mainstream media.

    • This is so impractical from the certification perspective that it's not even funny - I can't see it happening for years simply through trying to get permission from the FAA/NTSB to even try the idea.

      That particular part is easier than you think. The FAA has something called a "powered lift license" already done and in the books. They did it for Moller back in the day. (Remember that Popular Mechanics cover?)

      But it's rather blindingly obvious that the actual product is a Tesla vehicle with limited edition SpaceX badging, sold at a premium. That's a time honored tradition in car manufacturing. There are fucking Eddie Bauer SUVs, after all. They're a Ford Bronco, Explorer, Expedition, or Excursion w

  • How much cost and value? Iridium works was deployed timely but the ROI was a boondoggle.

  • A gimmick, that is all. Harrier, FOI. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday January 13, 2019 @10:58AM (#57954048) Journal
    When Harrier VTOL fighter debuted in the 1990s, it was remarkable. Vectored thrust, The cold jet was ducted into four louvered nozzles, achieving remarkable performance. VIFfings, vectoring-in-flight made it a superb combat aircraft.

    Apart from big problems like high fuel consumption, limited combat time, maintenance and cost, the minor problems not talked much outside included FOI, military speak for foreign object ingestion, small objects pebbles and stuff on the tarmac being kicked up and getting sucked into the air intakes. And another issue was the control jets. When the aircraft is hovering or at very low speeds, the control surfaces dont work, (ailerons, rudder, elevators etc), so they used small nozzles at the tips of control surfaces. These jets go in all directions creating hazard for tarmac workers and sailors on the flight deck.

    The roadster is going to have two packs of Model 3 batteries. That is 2200 lb. So the loaded weight is likely to be around 3500 lb, very heavy for a two seat roadster. 10 thrusters, 350 lb each kicking up pebbles all around is very very impractical. Hazard to adjacent vehicles and pedestrians would be too much. But, on a clean surface, on prototype, with some good press cameras rolling, it can occupy one or two news cycles. About 30 sec coverage in news, and probably 2 minute segments in other programs. Free publicity worth about 100 to 200 million. So it is worth doing from Tesla point of view.

    • Harrier jets need something like 10 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time.

    • When Harrier VTOL fighter debuted in the 1990s

      The Harrier was first flown in 1967, and was introduced to operational service in 1969.

      it was remarkable.

      In the 1990s it would have been remarkable. In the 1960s it was amazing.

      • Thanks. I made a mistake in recalling the year.

        Anyway the secondary problems I recalled are the main point. Not when these jump jets were made.

    • When Harrier VTOL fighter debuted in the 1990s, it was remarkable.

      The 90's?? Pretty sure they were used in the Falklands War.

      "The fucking 90's..."

  • He shows how far you can get with a lot of money if you go in one direction.

  • No (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Because there are at least two reasons this cannot be done (and several more that make it horribly impractical):

    1) The noise level would be insane and nobody would want / allow that to be used anywhere but an airport.
    2) The tanks he mentioned using would be ridiculously cold, not something you'd put in your back seat.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rjr162 ( 69736 )

      No kidding. Ever pull the pressure relief valve on a compressor tank with ~130 psi in it? Even if it's a horizontal tank with wheels on one end and rubber feet on the other, with the vavle sending air that "would direct" the tank towards the wheels, it doesn't move an inch and is loud. I guess the only places this could be used would be drag strip or track days

  • In particular, if it's an air taxi service, those issues are addressable. The issues really are:

    * Noisy
    * Propellers will blow small rocks and sticks and such around.
    * People peering into private backyards is unkind.

    The air taxi solution is:

    * To reduce noise and wind issues: longer but slower propellers and drop carriage by cables from the ends of long propeller arms.
    Note: this also solves the problem of requiring landing zones. And longer arms give exact precision.
    * To solve the privacy iss

    • Since we are science fantasizing here, why not have the windows be see through LCD panels? You can blast the interior with movies (or let's be honest, ads) while tracking heads to calculate line of sight and making sure private areas aren't visible from inside the vehicle.

  • I think Elon has watched too many Knight Rider re-runs.

  • Except... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ..this will require a liquid fuel source and you would need to add a gas tank to the car.

    This is a novel idea, but people have a hard enough time driving in 2D. I don't want some idiot crashing into my 5th story apartment.

    I would rather that the fuel system be used for powering an emergency generator just in case I can't get to a charging station in time. The tank can be small as to provide just enough charge time to get to the nearest charging station.

  • Carbon dioxide is a problem today. Global warming. So let's make flying cars and put ten times more carbon dioxide in the air. Brilliant.

  • Musk isn't talking about putting rocket engines on the car. He's talking about adding cold-gas thrusters. These thrusters are what is used to help steer rockets. Basically, he's going to add compressed air. The thrusters won't last for very long, and refueling them basically means running an air compressor. But it's going to be an awesome addition to have when visiting a drag strip.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by joh ( 27088 )

      If they will build this, it will be hardly more than a practical joke, but certainly a lot of fun. I really don't see where's the problem with this. It certainly won't be more crazy than any other 1 million supercar or whatever. And no, I don't think it will be really practical for your morning commute...

    • Continually running a compressor which has to operate at least at the same rate as the thruster means a *serious* power source.

      And if it's a Tesla, that power source means a battery.

      The drain on that battery is going to be immense - several orders of magnitude beyond current Tesla abilities.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by bgarcia ( 33222 )

        Continually running a compressor

        It will not run continuously. It will only be run when the car is charging, and perhaps also when specifically requested by the owner (to prepare for a race, for example).

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