Ok. So using the usual lab demo to flying hardware yard stick, we're looking at single stage to orbit space planes in another 30 or so years. Not bad. Can't wait.

So will you need an entirely separate set of engines to get up to mach 6 (which is a mere twice as fast as any production aircraft has flown)?

Does this require "super pure H2" as a fuel, or can this be tuned to use less expensive fuels like methane, alcohol, or even heavier hydrocarbons?

@Kpar I suspect that the size of the experiment drove purity requirements. Assuming they can scale up the system, I'd expect purity requirements to scale down at a similar rate.

Sounds great! I will wait until early adopters survive the first few hundred flights.

How can this serve as an SSTO craft? I was under the impression that escape velocity was Mach 32 not Mach 17.

Considering that this is a first stage demonstration, surely the next step is to design an engine with a radial detonation lip so that the entire explosion can be channelled into a shock wave created converging-diverging (CD) nozzle. Potentially at least three times more powerful.

Then again, considering the present acceleration effects upon astronauts housed within present rockets; what will the acceleration effects be upon passengers riding within such a explosion powered aircraft?

Must add, how about testing the concept on a Drag Strip? Perhaps a single second quarter mile.

@stevendkaplan escape velocity depends on gravity, so the further away you are from Earth the lower it gets. If you kick a ball from ground level you need that initial speed to be very high to make it fly away from Earth. But a rocket keeps generating thrust during flight, not just at start, so it will eventually reach a height at which its speed is higher than the escape speed up there (not higher than escape speed at ground level). At that point you could switch the engine off and continue inertially (assuming you're high enough above air friction).

@stephendkaplan - I think escape velocity is a theoretical value. My understanding is you don't have to reach that speed as long as you have enough fuel to keep adding velocity.

In Wikipedia it's explained like this...."A rocket, continuously accelerated by its exhaust, can escape without ever reaching escape velocity, since it continues to add kinetic energy from its engines. It can achieve escape at any speed, given sufficient propellant to provide new acceleration to the rocket to counter gravity's deceleration and thus maintain its speed."