The physics behind this can theoretically improve all turbines by up to 25% efficiency. Not just rockets but turbines, thats nothing to sneeze at. Your point is noted, but misguided as nasa is around for exactly this reason to push the limits of physics not building housing. This is a huge leap forward. The brayton cycle working at the top of its efficiency curve at all is akin to jet engines over propellers. It’s that big of a deal to increase efficiency by 25% for an entire class of engines.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This does indeed appear to be a real breakthrough, as the engineering applications apply to more than just space flight as you say.

Next up: In what settings is this cost effective to implement?

[–] mitchty@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I’d say still too soon to say. It’s a very touchy process to maintain so my guess is we would see this in rockets and probably large turbines used for power at first then likely ships and probably filtering down as we improve. Best bet on this is to expect it in a 10 year horizon from where it’s at. The fact we can run as long as this test did in only about 3ish years of development? Is a good sign. Honestly rotating detonation engines working at all is a minor engineering miracle so even just a working rocket engine is huge. This can help the rocket equation a ton depending on how far from theoretical we get in reality but let’s swag 20%, that is better than the 10% we gained from switching from an open cycle to closed cycle rocket engine.

Fun times ahead though!