Tesla · 13 Oct 2026
Tesla's Roadster reveal is Thursday: Musk's promised SpaceX cold-gas thruster package
Tesla's Roadster reveal is Thursday, and the wildest promise is Musk's SpaceX package: about 10 cold-gas thrusters and a claimed 0-60 mph in 1.1 seconds
Those white puffs in the video are the same idea at work.
A Falcon 9 booster uses nitrogen cold-gas thrusters to flip itself around just after stage separation. Up there the air is almost gone, so its titanium grid fins have nothing to grip. Pods of high-pressure nitrogen at the top of the booster puff it round engines-first, which SpaceX's Falcon user's guide lists as attitude control for recovery.
Nothing burns in a cold-gas thruster. It's just very high-pressure gas pushed out through a nozzle, and the push comes straight from Newton's third law.
In June 2018 posts, @elonmusk said the Roadster version would run on ultra-high-pressure air stored in a SpaceX rocket COPV bottle, a carbon-fibre-wrapped tank, refilled by an electric pump. The tank would take the place of the rear "kid seats."
He said the thrusters would "dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering," adding "maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly."
In May 2021 Musk confirmed the 1.1-second 0-60 claim, calling it "very intense." That works out to roughly 2.5g of average acceleration.
Speculation: thrusters pointed sideways could, in theory, push the car into a corner as well as forward, and pointed down they could add grip by pressing it into the road.
Tesla hasn't confirmed the package for Thursday, and hover talk is still speculation. Thursday should tell us how much of the 2018 promise made it.
Watch the source clip: @SpaceIntel101 Falcon 9 cold-gas thrusters on X. More on the reveal: Roadster reveal this Thursday.
