Tesla’s latest Roadster has finally appeared.

After watching the launch, my first thought was not, “This is a very fast car.”

It was this — the future we imagined as children has finally arrived.

This car can accelerate from a standstill to 60 mph in under one second. It can use enormous suction to cling to the road and even drive upside down; combined with a propulsion system based on technology concepts from SpaceX, a car can actually leave the ground, change its attitude in mid-air, and land again.

Editorial image: the Tesla Roadster airborne after leaving the ramp, with its thrusters firing
The Roadster leaves the ramp and turns in mid-air during the event demonstration. Video frame: Tesla Roadster Event (Tesla / YouTube).

The world of Back to the Future used to be a movie.

Now, it is starting not to feel like one.

It is interesting that technology is becoming more complex at an unprecedented speed, while human life seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

As research shows intelligence test scores falling in recent years, people design more activities that are faster, simpler, easier to join, and require less thought or long-term training. Sport is the same. Rules become simpler, stimulation comes faster, while patience, discipline, technique, and years of practice become something rare.

Then comes the question:

「Will there still be judo in a future like this?」

I think the answer is definitely — yes.

Because in every era, there will always be people who are not satisfied with “just make it simpler.”

More than a century ago, Jigoro Kano reorganized jujutsu into judo. What he was thinking about was never merely a competition, but how the body, education, discipline, and thought could make a person better.

Elon Musk does something completely different, but there is one thing they have in common:

Neither accepts “this is just how the world is” as an answer.

When other people ask, “Why do it this way?” they ask:

「Why not?」

But what the future needs may never have been more simple things.

It needs people who are still willing to think, to practise, to fail, to stand up again, and finally to turn things that once existed only in imagination into reality.

As long as humanity still has people like Jigoro Kano, and people like Elon Musk who are crazy enough to turn the impossible into the possible, judo will not disappear.

The future needs only judo and Elon Musk.

Event video

Tesla's official livestream of the Roadster event; the ramp demonstration starts at about 6:03.

Sources