Next-Gen Tesla Roadster Parks Beside a Falcon 9 at SpaceX Headquarters

Tesla’s next-generation Roadster turned up at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California on October 28, less than two weeks after the car flew off a ramp at its unveiling in Texas. Photos shared on X by SpaceX engineer Deanna Rice show the new Roadster parked outdoors beside the famed Falcon 9 that stands outside company headquarters at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Jack Northrop Avenue.

The rocket is not a random backdrop. Rocket B1019 was the first orbital-class booster ever to land after a launch, on December 21, 2015, after it sent 11 Orbcomm satellites to orbit and flew back to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX chose not to fly it again; after a test fire in Florida, the booster was shipped to Hawthorne and raised upright as a permanent monument in August 2016. Parking the Roadster beside it is symbolic in itself: the car flies on SpaceX cold gas thrusters, in the words of its own unveiling.

The technical link is real, not just photographic. The Thrust and Rocket versions of the Roadster use cold gas thrusters fed by composite overwrapped pressure vessels, the same type of tank SpaceX flies on Falcon 9, and Elon Musk has described the car as the work of Tesla and SpaceX engineers together. Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph in under 0.9 seconds for the Thrust version and under 0.59 seconds for the Rocket version, while the base Performance model relies on a fan and ground sealing system for grip, according to Teslarati’s breakdown of the three configurations. With merger committees at both companies already exploring a combination, the Hawthorne photo-op reads as a teaser for what a combined company could build.