The “revolutionary” air-breathing engine could, in theory, lift an aircraft from a runway to more than 30km (18.6 miles) into the stratosphere and continuously accelerate it to 16 times the speed of sound.
At this velocity, even the longest intercontinental flights could take just one or two hours while consuming less fuel compared with conventional jet engines.
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I’ll wait until other countries validate the findings, or until someone makes a working prototype, before getting excited. Seems like it’s one of those “too good to be true” stories like the LK-99. Hype in tech and science almost always leads to disappointment.
This article is bullshit: they’re reporting that a blueprint was made. No demonstration, no proof of it working.
Rotary detonation isn’t a new concept and GE has demonstrated a rotary detonation scramjet for 0 - Mach 5.
If you really think that 0 to Mach 16 is within reach with current technology RDEs I have a bridge to sell you.
Darpa has all the money of God and they’ve been throwing billions at the exact problem of rotary detonation. Everybody knows that detonation is more fuel efficient than deflagration and that turbine engines are holding jet aircraft back from hypersonic flight.
When they make a Mach 16 demonstrator I’ll believe them. Until then I’m still very excited for the demonstrated and actual capabilities of RDE Scramjets.
Yeah, no. Just no. Absolutely no. Faster than everything else.and higher than everything else and all of that by burning less energy? Come on people, stop falling for this kind of crap.
If that engine actually works, it would be cool to see it on a space plane. Mach 16 is nearly 2/3rds of orbital velocity. If you could go that fast on an air breathing engine, you wouldn’t need to carry nearly as much oxygen to get into LEO.
That’s nice…
…when I see it in production.