Sorry, Wankel, not yours.
The consensus from all 2 opinions I’ve seen on this so far is that it isn’t actually any real improvement, but Florida (Science) Man has an idea to reduce the weight of rockets and use less fuel.
The rotating detonations are continuous, Mach 5 explosions that rotate around the inside of a rocket engine, and the explosions are sustained by feeding hydrogen and oxygen propellant into the system at just the right amounts.
This system improves rocket-engine efficiency so that more power is generated while using less fuel than traditional rocket energies, thus lightening the rocket’s load and reducing its costs and emissions.
Also by reading about this I discovered this way-cool, very nerdy newsletter on space news:
One of the cooler recent research projects they mentioned is a way to place small telescopes outside the solar system and use the Sun as a lens to image planets around other stars!
I mean, holy shit that’s awesome. We absolutely live in the future.
