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

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.)"

Comments

A gimmick, that is all. Harrier, FOI.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.