More then 70 years ago, Engineers had the idea to power a rocket engine with explosions, an idea which later became known as the rotating detonating engine (or RDE)
But don't all rockets rely on detonations?
To appreciate the innovation behind RDE's, we need to take step back and understand what traditional rocket engines are doing, and how that differs from a detonation.
In a rocket engine such as the raptor, fuel and oxidizer are mixed and burned at subsonic speeds, creating a steady flow of gas that expands and exits through the nozzle, propelling the rocket forward. Detonations are undesirable due to their rapid, uncontrolled release of energy, which could cause mechanical failure or c...