Can Tesla’s Roadster Really Fly? The Physics Explained

On October 15, 2026, Tesla’s new Roadster drove up a curved ramp and hung upside down about 21 m (68 ft) in the air. On a second run it let go, flipped, braked its fall with jets of gas and drove away. How? Three simple pieces of physics: air pressure, Newton’s third law and tyre grip. In this video: why suction never actually pulls, how much the air presses on you right now, the 1650s experiment where horses couldn’t pull two half-spheres apart, the fan cars that were banned in 1970 and 1978, how a cold-gas thruster works (the same idea that flew an astronaut untethered in 1984), and why a car on ordinary tyres can’t do 0–60 mph in under a second. Numbers marked “estimate” are our own back-of-the-envelope maths (assumptions shown on screen). Tesla’s figures are Tesla’s claims; nothing here has been independently tested yet. Shots marked SLOW-MO are Tesla’s own slow-motion replays. Chapters: 0:00 A car hanging upside down 0:32 What actually happened 1:39 Sticking: suction is the air pushing 4:03 Fan cars are 50 years old 5:14 Flying: cold-gas thrusters 7:12 Launching: 0–60 in 0.81 s 8:22 Is this the future? Sources: • Tesla, Roadster event livestream (Oct 15, 2026) —    • Roadster Event   • Tesla on X — “Real life, baby” — https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110913438... • Tesla on X — “Do a kickflip!” — https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110926164... • Tesla Roadster page (archived Oct 16, 2026) — https://web.archive.org/web/202610160... • PaulTan — telemetry, 0.81 s, 80 kN, 3.3 G — https://paultan.org/2026/10/16/tesla-... • Electrek — technical look — https://electrek.co/2026/10/15/an-upd... • TeslaNorth — Hagerty interview with Lars Moravy (fans, skirts) — https://teslanorth.com/2026/10/16/tes... • NOAA — air pressure — https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosp... • Museo Galileo — Magdeburg hemispheres — https://catalogue.museogalileo.it/ind... • NASA — McCandless and the MMU, 1984 (S84-27017) — https://images.nasa.gov/details/s84-2... • NASA NTRS — Shuttle ascent loads up to ~3 G — https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19940... • Formula1.com — 1978 Swedish Grand Prix result — https://www.formula1.com/en/results.h... • McMurtry — upside-down driving demo (2025) — https://mcmurtry.com/upside-down-driv... • Gordon Murray Automotive — T.50 fan — https://www.gordonmurray.com/automoti... • Smithsonian — Manned Maneuvering Unit — https://airandspace.si.edu/collection... • SpaceX Falcon user’s guide (nitrogen thrusters) — https://www.spacex.com/assets/media/f... Footage: Tesla (Roadster event livestream and Tesla on X) — used for news commentary and explanation. CurioKind is not affiliated with Tesla or SpaceX. Photos and video: NASA (public domain); SpaceX (CC0); Craig Howell (CC BY 2.0); Hugh Lunnon (CC BY-SA 2.0); edvvc (CC BY 2.0); Calreyn88 (CC BY 4.0); Michele Borioli (CC BY 2.0); Andrew Basterfield (CC BY-SA 2.0); LepoRello (CC BY-SA 3.0); T. Limpanuparb et al. (CC BY-SA 4.0); engraving from Guericke’s Experimenta Nova, 1672 (public domain) — via Wikimedia Commons. Pexels: Marc Espejo, cottonbro studio, Gustavo Fring, K. Music (YouTube Audio Library): “Is This Really Happening?” — TrackTribe; “Cumulus Nimbus” — Quincas Moreira; “Ether Oar” — The Whole Other; “The Empty Moons of Jupiter” — DivKid; “Polymetric Juggling” — DivKid; “Water Lillies” — Density & Time. Animations, narration script and graphics: CurioKind. #Physics #TeslaRoadster #AirPressure #Engineering #ScienceExplained