A laptop expansion card with a liquid CO₂ thruster that survives a 10 m drop
gnukeith · x · 2026-10-17
gnukeith unveiled the "touchdown expansion card": a standard-bay (30×32×6.8mm) card whose titanium shell is the tank, holding 12.5 g of liquid CO₂ at 57 bar with a 190-bar burst disk.
The main nozzle fires down through the laptop's underside (32 N thrust, 128 N with four), 45° side jets stop tumbling, and a 6-axis IMU plus time-of-flight ranger time the burn — no moving parts except solenoid valves (1.2 ms to open, PWM throttled). Result: a 10 m drop lands at 0.3 m/s. Powered via USB-C with a 0.1 F supercap.
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