What Is A Rotating Detonation Engine - And Why Are They Better Than Regular Engines
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as the introductory explainer whenever rotating detonation engines show up in the news.
What it is
Scott Manley explains rotating detonation engines, how they differ from pulsed detonation engines, and why thermodynamics predicts they beat traditional jet and rocket engines.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends chrispeel · 2021-08 · on “Japan tests a rotary detonation engine in space, big increase in fuel efficiency”
Would an toroidal aerospike work with rotary detonation? :-) What sort of nozzles can one use with an RDE? I see that one can have multiple rotating pulses in an RDE [1]; I guess with some work the engine designer can control the number of pulses, is that right? Are there performance tradeoffs when deciding how many pulses to employ? What are they? If employing multiple pulses, does one want them rotating the same direction, or opposite directions? BTW, Scott Manley has an introductory video about RDEs [2]. [1] 5:50 in [LINK] [2] [this video]
Recommends class3shock · 2024-07 · on “GE Aerospace Successfully Develops and Tests New Hypersonic Dual-Mode Ramjet”
Another similar thing from the end of last year: [LINK] They really seem to love to talk about how fast they move except wait: [LINK] Per the above in 2019 they had been developing RDE technology for 5 years. Now developing the tech is different then building a prototype but it's good to take these timetable numbers with a large dose of salt. It is interesting to see RDE's getting alot of headlines recently. Really cool tech that works off of a principle known for a long time but only just recently hitting an inflection point in terms of development. Cool video from Scott Manly talking about RDE's: [this video]
Cites zeristor · 2022-10 · on “Japan tests explosion-powered rocket for the first time in space (2021)”
Scott Manley did a video 2 years ago on rotating detonation gun engines, them being 25% more efficient. More bang for your buck? [this video] I almost did mechanical engineering, in my placement before starting a degree I didn’t start I was working with detonation guns to fire tungsten carbide into machined parts to make them last far longer in nuclear power stations. That had finished, just work on jet engine blades.