Flying Cars and Grab Bars

Tesla's new Roadster flew last Thursday night. At a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, the car used cold-gas thrusters built with SpaceX to launch off a ramp and turn in midair, and Elon Musk told the crowd, "Turns out the future does have flying cars." Tesla says some versions reach 60 mph in under a second. Production is set for 2028. No price was given, and the reservation for the top version is $250,000.

We watched it with real admiration. It is hard engineering, done in public, and ambition like that is how the future gets built.

A caregiver's week runs on a shorter clock. The fall happens this winter, not in 2028. Most of what helps now already exists and costs less than that reservation, a motion sensor in the hallway, a pill dispenser that texts a daughter two states away, a video doorbell, a grab bar by the tub. The future can fly. The present still needs someone to put up the railing.