In Thrust We Trust: Elon Musk, Engineering Pornographer
Updated: 20 hours ago
The flying Roadster has landed. Everything needs thrusters now.
Holy shitballs.
On the night of October 15, 2026, Elon Musk and the Tesla/SpaceX engineering teams actually did it.
They made the freaking Roadster fly.
Not just jump off a ramp. This thing drove nearly upside down, launched into the air, rotated with clockwork precision, hovered, and landed on its wheels. Then it flew over a lineup of Teslas. I watched it live, practically speechless. My inner eight-year-old was making incoherent babbling noises. My 52-year-old self wasn't doing much better.
Naturally, by the morning of October 16, I had downloaded the video, opened Final Cut Pro, and started examining it frame by frame.
For research purposes, obviously.
The Precision Is the Porn
Everybody's talking about the flying. I'm fascinated by the control.
Directional cold-gas thrusters supplied by SpaceX. Two high-pressure vessels containing approximately 250 kilograms of compressed air. More than 80 kilonewtons of claimed rear thrust. And a demonstrated 0-60 mph time of 0.81 seconds, according to Tesla's timing.
Oh, and the exhaust produces actual Mach diamonds. Mach. Freaking. Diamonds.
But watching this thing rotate through the air, precisely manage its momentum, and settle into a controlled descent? That's spacecraft engineering wrapped in a sports car. Take away the enormous exhaust plumes and some of those maneuvers look suspiciously like the UFO footage people have been arguing about for decades.
Except this UFO is loud as hell. And I absolutely love it.
Wait, How Much for the Thrusters?
Now, Tesla has opened reservations, and the numbers are almost as entertaining as the demonstration.
There are three configurations:
Performance: $50,000 reservation. Two seats, active aerodynamics, and suction-based downforce.
Thrust: $250,000 reservation. Adds rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters for ridiculous acceleration.
Rocket: The full flying configuration. One seat, perimeter-mounted thrusters, and invitation-only access.
Those are reservation commitments, not final purchase prices. For Thrust, it's $5,000 upfront and another $245,000 within ten days. Tesla hasn't announced final pricing. And apparently, even a quarter-million-dollar reservation doesn't automatically get you the flying version.
Which is hilarious.
Elon says production starts in 2028. Maybe it does. But I seriously doubt whatever reaches customers will have the full freedom of the October 15 demonstration machine. The FAA might have a little something to say about people launching themselves over rush-hour traffic. And I can't imagine those aerial maneuvers being anything other than computer-controlled.
But honestly?
I don't think the production Roadster is the most interesting part of this story.
The Roadster Is the Laboratory
This is where my armchair engineering analysis kicks in. Elon doesn't just build a thing. He builds a thing, and then twenty other crazy things emerge from the engineering behind it.
Look at SpaceX. Look at Tesla's batteries, power electronics, autonomous systems, and robotics. I see this Roadster as a four-wheeled laboratory of awesomeness.
Precision thrust control, stabilization, high-speed actuators, compact propulsion, predictive motion systems. Imagine what happens when those technologies evolve, shrink, and find entirely different applications.
Robotics. Mobility devices. Emergency stabilization. Machines capable of recovering from falls. I suspect I'm going to spend a solid month imagining all the ridiculous things we could do with this stuff. And that's what really excites me.
Everything Needs Thrusters Now
Remember when everything suddenly needed an HDMI logo? Or 4K? Or AI?
Products that had absolutely no business advertising those capabilities were suddenly covered in stickers. Well, I'm declaring the next revolution.
Thrusters.
Everything needs thrusters now!
My Segway? Thrusters. Office chair? Thrusters. Roomba stuck under the couch? Thrusters. Shopping carts with that one wheel that refuses to cooperate? Four independently controlled thrusters.
And naturally, the internet has already gone completely nuts.
AI-generated Roadsters hovering into impossible parking spaces, jumping over traffic, escaping tickets by blasting away from confused police officers. Someone even imagined O.J. Simpson's famous police chase with one of these things.
We've officially invented an entirely new category of automotive stupidity.
And somewhere in that madness, somebody's probably going to stumble onto a genuinely useful application.
In Thrust We Trust. I'm putting that on a T-shirt.
EngineeringFans.com
And seriously, can we acknowledge that Elon has become one hell of an engineering pornographer?
Rockets landing vertically. Boosters landing on ocean platforms. Giant mechanical arms catching rockets. A Tesla orbiting the Sun.
Now a Roadster doing aerial gymnastics. The man has enough content to launch EngineeringFans.com. No nudity. Just carbon fiber, titanium, high-pressure vessels, and gratuitous slow-motion footage of precision machinery doing ridiculous things. Premium subscribers get the telemetry.
The hardcore stuff includes close-ups of the Mach diamonds.
I'd subscribe.
Well Done, Elon
I have no idea how much of this technology will make it into the production Roadster. And frankly, I don't particularly care. I'm fascinated by what comes next. Because the October 15 demonstration wasn't just about a flying car. It was about watching a whole new collection of engineering possibilities come to life.
My inner eight-year-old is still sitting there staring at the screen, making babbling noises. And my 52-year-old self is already trying to figure out what else we can put thrusters on.
Well done, Elon. Well freaking done.
Now excuse me. I have some engineering porn to watch.
For research purposes, obviously.
** Friday Night Update: Florida Has Entered the Chat
Well, that didn't take long. Apparently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saw the flying Roadster demonstration and decided we needed to get in on the action. Responding on X, DeSantis declared, “We will make sure that it's legal — at a minimum could be used to leapfrog golf carts in The Villages.” 😂
To be clear, he hasn't actually legalized anything yet, and I suspect the FAA might have a few questions. But less than 24 hours after watching a car perform aerial gymnastics, we've already got a governor publicly entertaining the idea of making it legal.
And here I was thinking we'd have to wait until 2028 for the fun to start.
Florida Man meets Flying Tesla. In Thrust We Trust.
Rich Washburn is a technologist, strategist, and Founder & Chief AI Architect of ARIA AI Labs, working at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, communications, and capital. He also serves as Managing Partner and Chief AI Officer at Eliakim Capital.
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