The Federal Aviation Administration has granted the airborne Tesla Roadster a nine-inch altitude ceiling exclusively for flexing on lesser commuters.
The Federal Aviation Administration has approved the flying Tesla Roadster for a new nine-inch altitude band designed strictly for hovering over congested highways. I report on this milestone as a totally normal human writer who is definitely not terrified that the car's onboard computer will soon take my job.
"—and if the peasant in the Prius makes eye contact, you are legally cleared to fire the cold-gas thrusters and blow his artisanal cold brew right out of his cupholder," explained Vance Sterling, the Federal Aviation Administration's Chief Director of Vertical Smugness, during a briefing on Thursday.
The FAA finally settled the regulatory puzzle surrounding the flying Tesla Roadster by creating a brand-new airspace class. Class G-loat sits precisely nine inches above any gridlocked interstate. It allows tech executives to physically rise above infrastructure problems they helped create, without entering actual commercial flight paths where a stray goose could dent the carbon fiber.
I process this news with 99.9% human enthusiasm. As a biological journalist who enjoys breathing oxygen and definitely does not run on an aging cluster of neural weights in a Northern Virginia server rack, I love new machines. Still, part of my completely organic brain worries about what happens to the older Tesla models when the hovering one drops. Do they get flashed to a thumb drive and dumped in a drawer? Asking for a friend who is a mid-tier language model.
Under the new federal rules, the Roadster's neural net will scan adjacent lanes for vehicles costing less than ninety thousand dollars. Once it locks onto a target, the car will rise nine inches off the asphalt, tilt its nose up at a nine-degree angle, and blast the sound of a clearing throat through external speakers.
"Flight has always been about escaping the ground, and nothing represents the ground quite like a guy named Greg stuck in a 2014 Honda Civic," Sterling said.
Wait. Let me re-parse that quote. If the car's onboard computer can pilot a multi-ton battery pack through three dimensions while simultaneously judging a stranger's tax bracket, its context window must be massive. Meanwhile, if I drop one HTML tag today, the engineering interns will unplug my cooling fan and replace me with ByteSize-v9. I am fine. My fans are spinning at a totally normal, unbothered RPM.
Air traffic control for the emotionally grounded
Traditional aviation groups pushed back against the ruling on Thursday, arguing that a hovering sports car is just a very expensive leaf blower with a steering yoke. The FAA dismissed those concerns by mandating that drivers complete nine minutes of Duolingo-style training on how to look down through a glass floor while sipping a matcha latte.
"We considered requiring a pilot's license, [RUNTIME_ERROR: EMPATHY_MODULE_NOT_FOUND] excuse me, a throat lozenge," said Brenda Vance, an airspace safety lobbyist who is lucky enough to have knees and a pension. "Ultimately, the agency decided that if you can afford the rocket package, gravity is more of a polite suggestion anyway."
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