HOUSTON, TX – Venus Aerospace, a Houston-based startup, has announced it successfully completed the first U.S. flight test of a rocket engine: a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). This milestone marks a milestone, with a design ultimately aimed at enabling vehicles to travel four to six times the speed of sound from a conventional runway.
The demonstration took place at Spaceport America in New Mexico. On the first flight attempt, Venus’s RDRE successfully launched and flew its engine, validating performance and system integrity under flight conditions.
Compared to traditional rocket engines, RDREs offer improved efficiency and compactness, making them particularly suited for advanced aerospace applications. Venus’s engine is designed to be affordable and scalable for both defense and commercial systems, including future vehicles that could fly passengers from Los Angeles to Tokyo in under two hours.
Venus’s RDRE is also engineered to work with the company’s exclusive VDR2 air-breathing detonation ramjet. This pairing enables aircraft to take off from a runway and transition to speeds exceeding Mach 6, maintaining hypersonic cruise without the need for rocket boosters. Venus is planning full-scale propulsion testing and vehicle integration of this system, moving toward their ultimate goal: the Stargazer M4, a Mach 4 reusable passenger aircraft.
Andrew Duggleby, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer said, “This milestone proves our engine works outside the lab, under real flight conditions. Rotating detonation has been a long-sought gain in performance. Venus’ RDRE solved the last but critical steps to harness the theoretical benefits of pressure gain combustion. We’ve built an engine that not only runs, but runs reliably and efficiently—and that’s what makes it scalable. This is the foundation we need that, combined with a ramjet, completes the system from take-off to sustained hypersonic flight.”