In 1974 Evel Knievel tried to rocket across Idaho's Snake River Canyon and didn't make it. In October 2026, Elon Musk floated sending the new Tesla Roadster over the same canyon. We're tracking every real update, with sources, and nothing made up.
Last checked: Oct 21, 2026. We only flip a box when there's an official announcement or solid reporting.
No date, launch site or official confirmation has been announced. The countdown starts the moment there's a real date.
Dated, sourced, newest first. If we can't link a source, it doesn't go here.
Musk posted on X that future Roadster demos could include flying over Idaho's Snake River, or maybe the Grand Canyon, and landing on its wheels while "exceeding half the speed of sound." The post names no date, launch site or landowner. Backfire News notes half the speed of sound is roughly 380 mph, well above the 230+ mph Tesla quotes for some versions.
Source: Backfire News
CarBuzz reports Musk wasn't sure the car could make the jump and suggested it may need a longer run-up than Knievel's short dirt ramp, which is still there. It also notes Eddie Braun completed the jump in 2016 with a steam rocket called the Evel Spirit.
Source: CarBuzz
At the unveiling at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas test site, Musk raised Knievel's 1974 attempt and the stage response was "let's give it another shot." He suggested the canyon attempt might need something close to Mach 0.5. No date or specific plans were announced, and Tesla hasn't confirmed it will happen.
Source: Drive Tesla
Same canyon, 52 years apart. Here's how the two machines compare, using only what's been reported.
Hollywood stuntman Eddie Braun completed the jump in 2016 in a steam-powered rocket called the Evel Spirit (CarBuzz).
Sources: CarBuzz, Drive Tesla, Backfire News, Visit Southern Idaho. Speed and thruster figures are Tesla's claims and haven't been independently tested.
Could a Roadster really clear the canyon? Here's the physics, step by step, using real canyon measurements and Tesla's claimed specs. It's all high-school projectile motion, so grab a calculator and check us.
At Knievel's site the canyon is about 1,600 ft (488 m) rim to rim. If the car lands at the same height it took off from and we ignore air, the range of a projectile is:
Solve for the speed you need:
Worked example, 45°: sin(90°) = 1, so v = √(9.81 × 488) = 69.2 m/s = 155 mph. 45° gives the most distance for the least speed, so this is the minimum for any ramp.
If the landing is h feet lower than the launch, the car has extra time to fall, so it needs less speed:
Landing 50 ft (15 m) lower saves only about 3 mph at 45° (152 mph), but about 52 mph at 5° (319 mph). Dropping the landing helps flat, fast jumps the most.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column →
| Ramp angle | No air | With drag* | Hang time | Peak above rim | Landing 50 ft lower |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5° | 371 mph 598 km/h | 385 mph | 2.9 s | 35 ft (11 m) | 319 mph |
| 15° | 219 mph 352 km/h | 227 mph | 5.2 s | 107 ft (33 m) | 207 mph |
| 20° | 193 mph 311 km/h | 201 mph | 6.0 s | 146 ft (44 m) | 185 mph |
| 30° | 166 mph 268 km/h | 173 mph | 7.6 s | 231 ft (70 m) | 162 mph |
| 45° | 155 mph 249 km/h | 162 mph | 10.0 s | 400 ft (122 m) | 152 mph |
| 56° Knievel's | 161 mph 259 km/h | 169 mph | 12.1 s | 593 ft (181 m) | 159 mph |
*Drag is an estimate (see step 2). Hang time and peak height are the no-air values; drag adds about 2–4%. Tesla quotes a top speed of "230+ mph", so on paper the car is fast enough for ramps of about 15° and steeper, with no thrusters at all.
Air pushes back on the car with a force that grows with the square of speed:
We used air density ρ = 1.10 kg/m³ (thinner air at the rim's ~3,700 ft elevation), a drag coefficient Cd = 0.35 and frontal area A = 2.0 m² (both estimates for a low sports car), and 1,700 kg. At 162 mph that's about 2,000 N, or roughly 0.12 g of slowing. A small computer simulation, stepping the flight forward 1/500 of a second at a time, shows drag adds about 4–5% more speed: 162 mph instead of 155 at 45°. If the car tumbles and catches more air (Cd·A ≈ 1.5 m²), it needs about 171 mph.
At 45° and 69.2 m/s: t = 2 × 69.2 × 0.707 ÷ 9.81 = 10.0 s, and h = 48.9² ÷ 19.62 = 122 m (400 ft) above the rim. Add the ~540 ft drop from the rim to the river, and at the top the car would be about 940 ft above the water.
With steady acceleration a, the distance to reach speed v is:
Best case: Tesla claims 0–60 mph in under 1.6 s for the base Performance model. That's a = 26.8 ÷ 1.6 = 16.8 m/s² (1.7 g). Holding that all the way to 162 mph takes ~510 ft in 4.3 s.
More realistic: above about 80 mph the motors run out of power (claimed peak ~1,000 kW), so a = P ÷ (m·v) shrinks as speed rises, and drag grows. Our simulation says ~800 ft (245 m) in about 5.8 s, plus the ramp itself. The Thrust and Rocket versions claim faster 0–60 times with cold-gas thrusters, which would shorten this.
At 162 mph (72.3 m/s): ½ × 1,700 × 72.3² ≈ 4.4 million joules, about 1.2 kWh. At Musk's ~380 mph it's 24.5 MJ (6.8 kWh). That's 2.3× the speed but more than 5× the energy, because speed is squared.
Without air, the car lands as fast as it launched, still moving at 45°. That's 155 mph, with 109 mph (48.9 m/s) straight down. Stopping that downward speed in distance d takes:
On flat ground with about 1 ft (0.3 m) of suspension travel, that's roughly 400 g. No car or person survives that. The answer is a landing ramp angled to match the ~45° fall, so the car keeps rolling and the wheels only absorb a little. Then it has to stop from about 148 mph (drag slows it slightly in the air):
| Stopping distance | 100 ft (30 m) | 300 ft (91 m) | 500 ft (152 m) | 1,000 ft (305 m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average g | 7.4 g | 2.5 g | 1.5 g | 0.7 g |
Braking at a hard 1 g needs about 740 ft (225 m). At a gentler 0.5 g it's about 1,470 ft (450 m), so the north rim needs a long, clear runout.
To bend from flat to 45°, the ramp has to curve. On a curve of radius r, the push into the seat is:
At 162 mph: a 330 ft (100 m) curve gives about 6.3 g, a 660 ft (200 m) curve about 3.7 g, and a 1,300 ft (400 m) curve about 2.3 g. Gentler curves mean a much bigger ramp.
Move the sliders. The numbers use the same formulas and drag estimate as above.
The "Rocket" Roadster carries tanks of high-pressure nitrogen that blast out through small nozzles, called cold-gas thrusters. Here's what that gas can actually do, using Tesla's claims where they exist and labeled estimates where they don't.
To hold the car up, the jets must push as hard as gravity pulls, which is the car's weight:
The car weighs about 1,700 kg, plus about 252 kg of gas, for 1,952 kg loaded. That's 1,952 × 9.81 = 19.2 kN just to hover. Tesla says its rear thrusters make more than 80 kN in launch mode. That's 80 ÷ 19.2 ≈ 4.2 times the car's weight, or a 4.2 g push.
The Rocket version has 600 liters of tanks. Tesla quotes "up to 10,000 psi" (689 bar). The ideal-gas law overestimates at these pressures: at 500 bar and 20°C it gives 345 kg. Real nitrogen is "stiffer" (compressibility Z ≈ 1.37), so it's really about 420 kg/m³ × 0.6 m³ = 252 kg. That matches the ~250 kg Car and Driver reported. At the full 689 bar it would be about 297 kg. We use 500 bar and 252 kg.
Cold nitrogen is a weak rocket. We estimate a specific impulse Isp ≈ 60 s, so the exhaust leaves at ve ≈ 588 m/s. (The gas cools as the tank empties, and the nozzles fire into air, so we use 60 s instead of the textbook ~70 s.) Total impulse is J = 252 × 588 ≈ 148 kN·s. The most speed the gas could add is Δv = 588 × ln(1,952 ÷ 1,700) ≈ 81 m/s (182 mph), ignoring gravity and drag. With Isp anywhere from 50 to 70 s, that's 152–212 mph.
If the jets throttle down to just hold the car up, the gas lasts about 8.3 s. At the full 80 kN, the gas flows out at 80,000 ÷ 588 ≈ 136 kg every second, so the tank is empty in 1.9 s. Wired reports the thrust also tapers off as the pressure drops. Our model keeps it constant, so treat these as best case.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column →
| Plan (80 kN unless noted) | Launch speed | Runway* | Hang time | Touchdown | Gas used |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No jets, 45° ramp | 162 mph | ~800 ft | 10.2 s | 148 mph | 0 kg |
| 1 s boost at takeoff, 45° | 71 mph | ~100 ft | 9.7 s | 149 mph | 136 kg |
| 1 s boost + brake with the rest, 45° | 71 mph | ~100 ft | 10.1 s | 69 mph | 252 kg |
| Whole tank as boost, 45° | 18 mph | ~10 ft | 7.4 s | 174 mph | 252 kg |
| Whole tank as landing brake, 45° | 170 mph | ~930 ft | 13.8 s | 68 mph | 252 kg |
| Flat runway (0°), hover jets 20 kN for 7.4 s | 108 mph | ~250 ft | 10.7 s | 110 mph | 252 kg |
| 5° ramp: no jets vs. hover jets | 385 → 95 mph | — | 12.1 s | 113 mph | 252 kg |
All with air drag. *Runway is the wheels-only distance to reach that speed, using the power-limited estimate from step 4. A boost is fired along the flight path, a brake is fired against it, timed to end at touchdown, and hover jets point straight up. Braking costs a little range, so the launch speed creeps up. Even at 69 mph the car still sinks at about 53 mph, so it would still need a sloped landing ramp.
Choose when and how hard to fire the jets. The dotted gray line is the no-jet jump. Yellow is your jump, and blue is where the jets are firing. The red dashes show what happens at your speed with the jets off.
Gas: 252 of 252 kg used
Pick a speed and a ramp angle, then press Launch (or Enter). Hold Space, or the JETS button on a phone, to fire the jets straight up. Jet time is short, so save some to cushion the landing. Touch down gently inside the green zone. Levels change the gas, wind and landing limits to make it a game. Gravity, air drag, jet thrust and gas use are the same physics as above.
A car isn't shaped like a dart. Leaving the ramp, it tends to pitch nose-up or nose-down, and over 10 seconds a slow spin adds up. Tesla says the Roadster's thrusters can make small corrections in flight. That's a claim we can't check yet.
A steady 20 mph crosswind on the car's side (about 4 m²) could push it roughly 15–20 ft sideways over a 10-second flight (estimate). A headwind or tailwind changes the distance too.
A ramp aimed just 1° off to the side misses by about 28 ft at 1,600 ft. Every 1% too fast or slow moves the landing about 32 ft. The good news: at 45°, being 3° off in steepness only costs about 9 ft.
No official viewing area exists yet, and nobody knows where a Roadster would launch. These are real public spots with canyon views today, and the best places to see Knievel's ramp.
2015 Neilsen Point Place, at the base of the I.B. Perrine Bridge. Its floor-to-ceiling windows look out on the canyon, the 486-foot-tall bridge and the historic Knievel jump site. It also rents bikes for the rim trail.
A fully paved rim trail of about 6.5 miles, with access at the Visitor Center, Shoshone Falls Park and Poleline/Eastland Road. You can ride under the bridge and often catch BASE jumpers on the east side.
The 1974 earthen ramp sits on the south rim a few miles east of the Visitor Center. The ramp itself is on private property. View it from the Visitor Center, or from within about 100 yards at the top of the Centennial Trail.
The paved Centennial Trail runs about 1.8 miles from Shoshone Falls toward the jump site, with some steep inclines. Shoshone Falls is also on the rim trail.
Sources: Twin Falls Visitor Center, Canyon Rim Trails, Guided Canyon Rim Trail, Evel Knievel Jump Site (Visit Southern Idaho).
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