Rotating Detonation Engines for Increased Payload to Orbit at Lower Cost

The space launch community has been pursuing improvements in performance and efficiencies leading to higher specific impulses since the inception of rocketry. This effort has been largely successful reaching near theoretical limits for constant pressure combustion devices leaving little margin for higher specific impulses. Todays advances in traditional rocket engines focus on incremental improvements in performance and reducing development, fabrication, and launch costs. Alternative engine cycles, namely the continuous detonation cycle, offer the opportunity of significant, not incremental, launch capability increase simply through fundamental thermodynamic principles.Rotating detonation engines have recently gained interest across the world for using the detonation cycle to theoretically increase specific impulse by 10% over constant pressure combustion operation. Further, the detonation process converts the propellants to high temperature exhaust products at supersonic speeds allowing chambers less than 5% of the volume of constant pressure engines to be used and offering the potential for reduced inert mass and lower engine cost. IN Space proposes to evaluate the expansive RDE design space for space launch applications, select configurations with the potential to lower launch costs while increasing payload size, and produce a detailed path to retire development risks and mature the technology for these systems.