Company claims first U.S. ground launch of a rotating detonation rocket engine
A Wednesday morning flight test in the New Mexico desert could put a Texas startup one step closer to achieving its hypersonic ambitions.
Venus Aerospace yesterday announced that it conducted what it’s calling the first U.S. ground-launched flight demonstration of a rotating detonation rocket engine, a configuration that relies on continuous detonations for thrust rather than traditional combustion. On the ground, the duffel-bag-sized engine ignited to propel a small rocket to an altitude of 4,400 feet [1,340 meters] over the Spaceport America complex north of Las Cruces. The engine burned for seven seconds and produced 1,600-2,000 pounds of thrust to push the rocket to about Mach 0.5. The 30-second flight concluded with a gentle parachute landing, after which the rocket and engine were recovered.
This test was not meant to achieve the Mach 5-plus velocity required for true hypersonic flight, said Venus co-founder and CEO Sassie Duggleby, but it still demonstrated that the company “has solved one of the toughest propulsion challenges and brought hypersonic flight meaningfully closer to reality.”
“We believe it may be the most affordable engine in the world” for propelling a missile or aircraft from takeoff to hypersonic speeds, Duggleby said in response to emailed questions.
Duggleby and her husband, Andrew, founded Venus in 2020 with the objective of developing the technology required for reusable hypersonic vehicles. Specifically, the rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, could help make it possible for governments and companies to manufacture hypersonic weapons that are 10 times cheaper than current versions, said Andrew Duggleby, who also serves as the startup’s chief technology officer. The RDRE could also propel weapons four times farther and loft space payloads that are four times larger, according to Venus.
The current capabilities of hypersonic vehicles being developed by China, Russia and even the U.S. are difficult to ascertain, due to the classified nature of much of the technology. However, “we’re confident Venus’s technology is the highest-performing, commercially viable, most affordable high-speed flight technology of its kind in the world,” Andrew Duggleby said.
He added: “No other country or company comes close to what Venus has accomplished today.”
While the first test of this kind, Tuesday’s flight wasn’t the first for this particular rocket engine. In February 2024, a 2.4-meter-long drone equipped with a lower-thrust version of the RDRE was released from a modified fighter jet at an altitude of 12,000 feet. The drone reached Mach 0.9 and flew for less than a minute.
As its name indicates, an RDRE produces thrust by igniting fuel in a rapid, continuous series of detonations. Instead of a hollow combustion chamber, these detonations occur within a ring-shaped channel. The resulting supersonic shockwaves travel around this channel to ignite new detonations, propelling the craft forward for as long as additional fuel is injected. Researchers have long touted the potential benefits of RDREs — namely better fuel efficiency and greater thrust, which would allow engineers to build shorter, more lightweight engines. According to Venus, its RDRE has demonstrated efficiency that would place it in the upper 90th percentile of standard rocket engines.
In the long-term, the company plans to install a version of this engine aboard its planned Mach 9 passenger plane, the Stargazer M4. The RDRE would be combined with an air-breathing detonation ramjet to accelerate the aircraft from takeoff to hypersonic velocity, where the ramjet could maintain hypersonic speeds during the cruise phase.
Plans call for testing a 2,000-pound-thrust version of the RDRE later this year, with the aim of achieving a velocity of Mach 2 or Mach 3. Separately, Venus is targeting 2026 for a demonstration flight of the ramjet, the goal being to fly hypersonically for two minutes.
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