For the first time in the US, a rotating detonation engine flew a test flight at New Mexico's Spaceport America.
A rotating detonation engine? RDEs aren't completely immune to being talked about here on the blog, and we did an intro to the topic five years ago. To borrow a summary:
Rotating detonation engines, or RDEs, sound like something out of science fiction, but the concept is about as old as the space age itself. In the late 1950s and early '60s, aerospace engineers working on rocket engines envisioned RDEs as a way to turn a problem into a solution. “Sometimes the rocket motors would get a real bad instability and you’d get an explosion,” pioneer Arthur Nicholls recalled in a University of Michigan interview shortly before his death. “Then it led to the idea—well, what if we use that?”
The US company is called Venus Aerospace, and on Wednesday, May 13, they reported they had completed a short flight test of their rotating detonation rocket engine at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The company's chief executive and co-founder, Sassie Duggleby, characterized the flight as "historic." It is believed to be the first US-based flight test of an idea that has been discussed academically for decades, a rotating detonation rocket engine. The concept has previously been tested in a handful of other countries, but never with a high-thrust engine.
"By proving this engine works beyond the lab, Venus brings the world closer to a future where hypersonic travel—traversing the globe in under two hours—becomes possible," Duggleby told Ars.
There's not much information in that article over on Ars Technica; just that it was a small launch vehicle powered by the company's 2,000-pound thrust engine, launched from a rail in New Mexico. The vehicle flew for about half a minute, and, as planned, did not break the sound barrier.
Fundamentally, RDEs are liquid-fueled engines and there's no shortage of
conventional liquid fueled engines and no shortage of different fuel/oxidizer
combinations. The savings come from the details. In conventional
liquid rocket engines, the fuel and oxidizer are pressurized and fed into the
ignition chamber using bulky turbopumps and other complicated machinery.
An RDE doesn’t need these pressurization systems, because the shock wave from
the detonation provides the pressure.
Sassie Duggleby and her husband Andrew founded Venus Aerospace nearly five years ago with the goal of making RDEs a commercially viable option for building business jet-sized hypersonic aircraft that fly in the range of Mach 5, 6, or more and carry perhaps a dozen passengers.
Those long range goals are essential, but keeping your business alive and growing is also essential. Venus is attempting to find more near-term opportunities and revenue sources. The company is seeking to position itself as a leader in affordable hypersonic flight for commercial and defense applications.
"It is vital for US interests that the government continues to fund efforts to maintain America’s economic competitiveness and national security," Sassie Duggleby said. "Hypersonics is one of the critical technologies to remain ahead of our national competitors. We’re fortunate to have robust interest from both government and commercial sectors."
A rotating detonation rocket engine takes off in New Mexico, visible at the middle top of the photo. Credit: Venus Aerospace
Jerry Pournelle wrote a great short story where in it a huge steel plate weighing thousands of tons carrying huge payloads, had the DeltaV to get to the moon, using very clean fission/fusion devices set off under the "pan" that was the "rocket" itself. Theoretically its more timed series of a hard pushes, guess the acceleration has a really steep curve after the first few pulses, it really gets going using that type of thrust, its rather high velocity. Sounds at first like a pretty wild crazy idea, but when you give it a good think the idea has a ton of merit, after all the whole idea is to create the fastest thrust possible, and their ain't much that has the inherent concentrated velocity, energy in a compact package if you like, as a nuke. In his story, Jerry postulated you can build a device which produces mostly very short half life radiations. The tricky part is building something which can handle all that heat and pressure, along with a feed device that survives too. The whole DeltaV aspect is like totally intriguing, imagine its like a single stage to the moons orbit contraption. The more practical aspect is just how much cargo can be launched, again the amount of DeltaV of the detonations. In the story two of these things are built in secret, inside a huge iceberg, floated out and launched way out in the south Pacific. Its a bunch of folks who had enough of those playing global domination game and want out and no part of the stupidity. Its the moon or bust for them.
ReplyDeleteMr. Pournelle was describing a USAF/DARPA/NASA concept called Project Orion. Nuclear bombs were jettisoned to the underside of a massive steel plate connected to the payload with shocks and springs to absorb the nuclear detonation energies. Was tested very sub-scale using conventional explosives. Would not be usable in our atmosphere though.
DeleteWandering Neurons
And the idea was used again in author John Ringo's Troy series.
DeleteI am still wrapping my mental arms around the RDE. I thought that a RDE was one of those very early radial aircraft engines that had the entire engine spinning.
Gonna have to read that, thanks for the rec.
DeleteRight! Thanks cause I could not recollect it was Orion. Jerry used it in FootFall with Larry Niven, if I am not mistaken. It was how humans ended up winning against the aliens invasion, this massive circular battle ship coming at them in their mothership.
Pffft, I'm still waiting for the Aerospike Raptor.
ReplyDeleteBit off subject, watched a doc about project Gemini, seriously detailed deep dive, everything from booster POGO to Buzz Aldrin's amazing paradigm shift he created with his orbital mechanics and micro G work. Its incredible too how critical today his theories and engineering excellence is of course as pertinent today as when Buzz proved his theories in space himself showing everyone what it took to function practically in zero G of space.
ReplyDeleteIts really a fantastic historical record, much in first person format but with an excellent overview, very well composed.
I watched a lot of the Gemini program, well what was shown of it on TV at that time, left an indelible impression on me., was born in 58, just old enough to comprehend what was going on, inthink if you did too you will especially appreciate this documentary. Almost thrilling even now, what they had to overcome, and the amount of engineering portrayed is awesome. You can literally see SpaceX and its overcoming problems developing with SuperHeavy/Starship. Simply an excellent film.
This is part 1:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bevXt1v-MGk
part 2:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w1u6J8aZi-g&pp=QAFIA9IHCQmQAp4VBgUm4g%3D%3D
The reason that RDE's are important is because detonation is a more efficient reaction than simple combustion. It produces more thrust per fuel usage. it's like the different classes of explosive reactions.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the Party Sassie! With a name like that, she cannot help but succeed.
ReplyDelete