Thrusters are as good at flipping cars as they are at hunting ballistic missiles.
Tesla’s long-delayed and still unreleased Tesla Roadster was formally re-introduced on October 15th and in addition to an angular, Cybertruck-like design and the ability to go 0-60 mph in less than a second, the company’s big surprise was that it can fly. The car cannot really “fly” in the tradition of Back to the Future Part IIbut more through a collection of controlled falling, jumping and flipping manoeuvres. While admittedly impressive, the concept is not unique to Tesla. Experimental missile defense systems have featured similar uses of thrusters since at least the early 2000s, in a form factor now called a Multiple Kill Vehicle or MKV.
In the case of the Roadster, the supercar is able to pull off its much-lauded kickflips thanks to two high-pressure air tanks and ten nozzles placed throughout the car that fire off compressed air to propel and stabilize it. Tesla claims the Roadster can fill those tanks on its own, though the full thruster setup is also only available on the Rocket trim of the car. The Thruster trim only has thrusters on the back of the car, and the Performance trim doesn’t have them at all. Importantly, Tesla also says the thrusters are “not approved for public road use.”
Missile Defense AgencyLockheed Martin’s MKV project didn’t begin in earnest until 2004, when the company won a $760 million contract from the US Missile Defense Agency to “build the first system capable of destroying multiple ballistic missile threats and interceptors with a single launch.” This system carries several smaller vehicles designed to intercept missiles to destroy them, and it keeps itself aloft with thrusters that quickly change its direction and orientation on the fly, not unlike the Roadster.
Finding actual footage of the MKV in action is tricky, especially since the concept of a single missile system that can take out multiple other missiles has been around since the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as the “Star Wars” program. The video below is allegedly from Lockheed Martin’s MKV, but similar footage has also been associated with SDI – and Lockheed Martin didn’t exist until 1995, so anything attributed before that is suspect. Regardless, that concept is what Lockheed Martin and another contractor, Raytheon, worked on in separate development tracks until the original MKV project was retired in 2009 as part of military budget cuts.
Besides their intended use – transporting the ultra-rich and destructive intercontinental ballistic missiles – the Roadster and MKV have one other important difference: how their thrusters actually work. Tesla is quite aware that the Roadster uses cold-gas thrusters (specifically compressed air), which means they don’t burn fuel to move what they’re connected around. Based on a 2008 Lockheed Martin press release, its MKV was used in “hot-fire tests” that suggest part of the system burned fuel for propulsion. Considering that no one currently owns either, it’s hard to say which is better, but the Tesla is presumably less flammable.