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Successful engine test brings Australian space launch capability a step closer:
An Australian research consortium has successfully tested a next generation propulsion system that could enable high-speed flight and space launch services.
The team's rotating detonation engine, or RDE, is a major technical achievement and an Australian first.
It was designed by RMIT University engineers and is being developed by a consortium led by DefendTex, with researchers from RMIT, University of Sydney and Universität der Bundeswehr in Germany.
How it works
While conventional rocket engines operate by burning fuel at constant pressure, RDEs produce thrust by rapidly detonating their propellant in a ring-shaped combustor. Once started, the engine is in a self-sustaining cycle of detonation waves that travel around the combustor at supersonic speeds greater than 2.5km a second.
Using this type of combustion has the potential to significantly increase engine efficiency and performance, with applications in rocket propulsion and high-speed airbreathing engines—similar to ramjets.
Benefits over existing engines include better fuel efficiency, simpler flight systems and a more compact engine, allowing for larger payloads and reduced launch costs.
[...] Although this technology is in its early stages, further development could support satellite launches from Australian soil and commercial opportunities for Australia's space industry, while indirectly supporting telecommunications, agriculture, transport, logistics and other industries.
YouTube video: What Is A Rotating Detonation Engine - And Why Are They Better Than Regular Engines
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @10:48PM (1 child)
What I'd like to know is what the downside is. Everything has a cost and the question always comes down to two things: Are the benefits worth the price, and it is a price we can actually pay. Aerospike engines seem like a great idea until you actually build one and find out about the overheating problem, never mind the extra weight. This thing sounds like they are trying to take advantage of the combustion instability that all large rocket engines suffer from, usually fatally, and make it work for them instead of against. I give them props for trying and wish them well, but taking one of the hardest problems in rocket science and turning it into an asset is not a small undertaking by any measure.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:49AM
As is so often the case with major technological advancements, the biggest and most obvious cost is the difficulty in making it work in the first place. Just as the biggest cost to matches and lighters versus a fire bow is the technology needed to produce them. Master that technology, and they promise to be smaller, lighter, simpler, and more efficient than anything currently in use. (Okay, maybe not simpler than solid rocket boosters, but pretty much everything else)
Trying to sustain a stable supersonic flame front within your fuel flow is a major challenge that various people have been working on for decades. I imagine it could make throttling down far more challenging as well, if not impossible. And it might well have issues igniting properly with the back-pressure from a tail-first landing burn.
But really, those are very situation-specific problems -even if they can only make it work reliably in a vacuum it would be a HUGE boon to interplanetary space travel, and second stages in general.