[veelenga]

Overview

• add the tesla-flying-roadster explainer, "How Tesla's flying Roadster really hops": the three tests of the 15 October 2026 demo at SpaceX's McGregor site in one 23 second run, in seven chapters:
  • the tank of compressed air
  • the nozzle (thrust is mass flow times exhaust speed)
  • the 0 to 60 test
  • the hook: the loop, the hold upside down on fan suction, the push-off
  • the flip and the catch
  • the jump over a row of parked vehicles with a 360 degree twist
  • why a hop is not a flight
• one scene at dusk: a generic bronze single-seat sports car with a tank cutaway, ten cold-gas nozzles with plumes and ground haze, the hook ramp on a steel truss with an inverted deck, a parked row of five vehicles, two landing boxes, force arrows, fan glow, ghost arcs and silhouettes, instanced wheels, nozzles and ghosts, per-view budgets under 130k triangles and 55 draw calls
• model from a sourced facts sheet: real-gas air, nitrogen and helium at 700 bar; the fill curve and the cold blow-down curve; the sprint, the loop loads, the brake and hold, the deck push, the roll from nozzle torque and roll inertia, the cushioned catch, the leap and twist, the per-tank gas budget with a 5 percent cut-off and the landing shortfall when a tank runs dry; every Tesla figure labelled as a claim
• five calculators (tank fill, nozzle pressure, rear thrust, loop entry speed, jump height), gas and tank chips that change the budget and the landing, moment chips that jump to the key seconds, six gauge readouts
• copy in eight languages with native-reader passes, search-friendly head text, no flight words for what the car does
• raise the page JavaScript budget by 10 KB (315 KB pages, 310 KB embed): this scene is 72 KB gzipped on its own and the trim pass found nothing to cut without changing the look

Notes

The 3D car and site carry no branding; Tesla and the demo are named in the copy as the news hook. The hook ramp's size, the entry speed, the hold length, the push-off speed, the nozzle ratings, the roll inertia and the catch thrust are the model's own choices and the copy says so.