Tesla Roadster's thruster-assisted 'flying' echoes Lockheed Martin's missile defense MKV

Engadget reported that the Roadster's "flying" ability is not flight in the Back to the Future Part II sense. The car uses two high-pressure air tanks and ten nozzles placed throughout the vehicle to fire compressed air, moving and stabilizing it. Tesla claims the Roadster can refill the tanks on its own. The full thruster setup is available only on the Rocket trim. The Thruster trim has thrusters only at the rear, and the Performance trim has none.

The concept is not unique to Tesla. Experimental missile defense systems have used similar thrusters since at least the early 2000s, in a form factor now called the Multiple Kill Vehicle, or MKV. Lockheed Martin's MKV project began in earnest in 2004, when the company won a $760 million contract from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to build what it described as the first system capable of destroying multiple ballistic missile threats and decoys with a single launch. That system carries several smaller vehicles designed to smash into missiles, and it keeps itself aloft using thrusters that can quickly change its direction and orientation, not unlike the Roadster.

Finding actual footage of the MKV in action is difficult, Engadget noted. The concept of a single missile system capable of taking out multiple other missiles has circulated since the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as the "Star Wars" program. A video circulating as Lockheed Martin's MKV has also been associated with SDI. Lockheed Martin did not exist until 1995, so anything attributed to the company before then is suspect. Lockheed Martin and another contractor, Raytheon, worked on separate development tracks until the original MKV project was retired in 2009 as part of military budget cuts.

Beyond their intended uses—transporting the ultra-rich and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles—the Roadster and MKV differ in how their thrusters work. Tesla says the Roadster uses cold-gas thrusters, specifically compressed air, so they do not burn fuel to move the vehicle. Based on a 2008 Lockheed Martin press release, its MKV was used in "hot-fire tests," suggesting that some part of the system burned fuel for propulsion. Because no one currently owns either vehicle, Engadget said it is hard to say which approach is better, though Tesla's is presumably less combustible.