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How Does the Tesla Roadster Sort of Fly?

To understand how Tesla's prototype for the long-delayed Roadster 2 hops and glides, we've got to talk about friction and force.

Released on 10/21/2026

Transcript

How does the Tesla Roadster fly?

It flies exactly like this.

This is an air rocket.

That's exactly what the Tesla Roadster uses.

So imagine that you have a car

and you have a compressed air tank in there, which it does,

and you throw air out the bottom.

Since the air has mass

and you give it velocity,

there's going to be a change in velocity,

a change in momentum,

and an acceleration for that air going down.

But where does that get it from?

The car has to push on it.

So let's call this the force the car exerts on the air FC.

Newton's third law says that forces come in pairs.

They're always an interaction between two objects.

So if the car pushes on the air,

the air has to push back on the car,

and that would be in the opposite direction.

So this is the force the air pushes on the car.

Now, if you get that force of the air

pushing the car equal to the gravitational force,

then this will hover.

If the force is greater than the gravitational force,

it will increase and speed up.

If the force is less, it will increase the speed down.

And that's how the car flies.

It's exactly the same as a rocket does in space,

except that uses a chemical reaction

to shoot stuff out the back of the rocket

instead of compressed air,

the only difference.