Houston Startup Raises $91M for Rotating Detonation Engine
Venus Aerospace, a Houston company founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife team Sassie and Andrew Duggleby, has raised $91 million. The company is building a new propulsion system aimed at making very fast passenger aircraft commercially viable, which it calls America's first rotating detonation rocket engine.
Context
A rotating detonation engine burns fuel in a continuous ring of controlled explosions, a design some hope could beat today's jet engines on efficiency. Mach 4 means four times the speed of sound, a speed that passenger planes have not reached commercially.
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