A supersonic drone, which is part of the development of a revolutionary new engine, took to the skies for the very first time recently. The prototype drone built by Venus Aerospace successfully completed its first test flight, marking the first important step towards not just supersonic but hypersonic air travel in the future.
While the drone was powered by a hydrogen peroxide monopropellant engine for its initial flight, it will be propelled by a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) engine on a later date. Measuring almost 2.5 meters long and weighing 300 pounds, the drone was dropped from another aircraft at an altitude of 12,000 feet. The engine running at 80 percent thrust helped the robotic aircraft reach a top speed of Mach 0.9 while flying for 10 miles.
“Using an air-launched platform and a rocket-with-wing configuration allows us to cheaply and quickly get to the minimum viable test of our RDRE as a hypersonic engine,” Venus Aerospace CTO and cofounder Andrew Duggleby said in a statement. “The team executed with professionalism and has a wealth of data to anchor and tweak for the next flight.” While supersonic drones might sound like something from the future, the concept is not really new.
The US Air Force has been using remote-controlled supersonic jets since the early 1990s as targets to test air defense and reconnaissance aircraft. However, all such supersonic drones were powered by traditional jet engines. This is what makes Venus Aerospace’s drone different; it has been designed to be propelled by a revolutionary RDRE engine.
In a rotating detonation rocket engine, fuel and oxidizer ignite within a circular path confined within a ring-shaped channel. The resulting shockwaves from this detonation sustain a combustion reaction autonomously, rendering this propulsion method notably more efficient than traditional combustion engines. RDRE engines are not only lighter and simpler but also at least 15% more efficient than conventional engines.
The Texas-based company is developing the revolutionary engine to create a reusable, hypersonic spaceplane named Stargazer. Venus Aerospace claims it will be capable of flying passengers upwards of Mach 9 (6900 mph), which will drastically cut down the travel time from San Francisco to Tokyo to just one hour. Well, don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, but the company is definitely moving in the right direction.
