19-05-2025
Texas Startup's Wild New ‘Exploding' Rocket Aces First Flight Test
The U.S. is one step closer to achieving hypersonic flight after Venus Aerospace, a Houston-based propulsion company, successfully launched a test of its rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) on Wednesday, May 14.
The company claims it is the first U.S.-based test of this technology, which is finally coming to fruition after decades of research and development. Eventually, RDREs could power high-speed aircraft capable of traveling more than six times the speed of sound, Venus Aerospace stated in its announcement.
'We've spent approximately four years and a portion of our $84 million in venture funding to take the RDRE from academic theory to flight-proven engine,' Sarah 'Sassie' Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace, told Gizmodo in an emailed statement.
'What makes the RDRE remarkable isn't just that it works—but that it's orders of magnitude more affordable than traditional propulsion systems,' she added.
The company launched a small rocket equipped with this 2,000-pound-thrust (roughly 907 kilograms) engine from Spaceport America in New Mexico. According to Aerospace America, the duffel-bag sized engine propelled a small rocket to an altitude of 4,400 feet (1,341 meters) and burned for seven seconds, pushing the rocket to about 383 miles (616 kilometers) per hour—roughly half the speed of sound.
The aircraft flew for about 30 seconds, then touched down with a gentle parachute landing, and recovery crews retrieved it, Aerospace America reports.
Theorized since the 1980s, RDREs are designed to be highly efficient and compact. This allows them to produce more thrust with the same amount of fuel as a traditional combustion engine, which combines highly pressurized propellant with an oxidizer inside a combustion chamber and burns them to produce a steady stream of exhaust that propels the aircraft forward.
Instead of exhaust, vehicles with RDREs are propelled by shockwaves. These engines use a sustained injection of fuel and oxidizer to create a wave of continuous explosions—or detonations—that travel around a circular channel. This produces a shockwave that shoots out the back of the aircraft at supersonic speed.
This technology has the potential to drastically reduce flight time, improve fuel efficiency, and reduce costs across multiple sectors—including military, commercial, and spaceflight systems—Venus Aerospace claims.
'Compared to traditional jet or rocket engines, our RDRE is up to 10 times cheaper to build and operate,' Duggleby said. 'That's because it has no moving parts, runs on storable fuels, and can be 3D-printed in about a week. As we scale into production and licensing, we expect the cost curve to continue to improve,' she added.
Once commercially available, RDREs could allow governments and companies to manufacture hypersonic weapons at a fraction of the cost of current versions, Andrew Duggleby, CTO and co-founder of Venus Aerospace, told Aerospace America. What's more, these engines could launch space payloads four times larger than the current technology is capable of, he said.
Achieving sustained hypersonic flight has been the company's goal since it was founded by Sassie and her husband Andrew in 2020. They foresee a bright future for the global hypersonics market, projecting it to surpass $12 billion by 2030 due to multi-industry demand.
But they still have a long way to go before their RDRE can power sustained hypersonic flight. Following last week's successful test flight, Venus Aerospace plans to conduct a thorough post-flight analysis to evaluate the engine's performance and inform future iterations, Sassie Duggleby said.
The company, she added, aims to have operational RDRE systems by the early 2030s. In the meantime, it will focus on scaling the technology up, honing in on its best applications, and engaging with potential investors—including U.S. defense and national security agencies, as well as commercial customers.
So, the future isn't here quite yet. But last week's test flight marks a major step towards bringing this highly powerful propulsion system out of the realm of science fiction and into reality.
