Rotating Detonation Engines
First developed in the 1950s at the University of Michigan, these rocket engines use powerful and chaotic detonations, self-propagating thanks to hypersonic shockwaves travelling around a ring-shaped combustion chamber, in place of slower, more controllable combustion reactions, to create powerful, high efficiency rockets and engines.
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A Florida team working with the US Air Force says that it's built and tested an experimental model of a rotating detonation rocket engine, which uses a spinning series of chaotic explosions inside a ring channel to create super-efficient thrust.
