SBIR Phase I: The Pulsar Rocket Engine; A Valve-Pulsed Detonation Rocket Engine

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will be substantial. This new advanced rocket engine with its increased thrust, efficiency, and simple design will significantly increase spaceship launch to orbit capabilities and reduce kilogram to orbit costs. Spaceship launch sizes in terms of cargo weight and volume will be significantly increased compared to the current most advanced rocket engines.

The commercial impacts will be significant. For the first time space tourism on a large scale will be made possible. The general public can realistically expect to participate in the great space adventure that only a relatively few astronauts and other adventurers have experienced to date.

Dreamers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and the space industry in general using this rocket engine will be able to plan and actually build orbiting artificial gravity structures providing multiple uses. For example, the enabled space infrastructure can be utilized as orbiting factories, habitats, science platforms, bases for asteroid mining, and tourism opportunities to name a few.

The power and efficiency of this innovative rocket engine will enable launch to orbit efficiencies that will stimulate rapidly expanding space based commercial activity for decades to come.

This SBIR Phase I project proposes to demonstrate the advantages of using pulsed reactant detonations as a means to increase engine thrust via the detonation of the fuel and to use those same reactant detonations to temporarily vacate a combustion chamber between detonations. In a vacated/partial vacuum condition backflow pressure to the turbo pumps from the combustion chambers is greatly reduced enabling significant increases in mass flow rates.

For all current rocket engines backflow pressure is a significant impedance to the turbo pump’s ability to inject reactants into the chamber. Thus, the insight gained here is that the thrust from reactant detonation is not the primary benefit of pulsed detonation engines. The primary benefit of detonation of reactants is in the momentary partial vacuum that occurs within the combustion chamber that is created between each detonation cycle.

Because of the momentary partial vacuum and resulting lack of back pressure within the combustion chamber far greater volumes of reactants per second can be injected into the chamber by the turbo pumps. Mass flow rates are greatly increased resulting in increased thrust and engine efficiency. The engine generates added thrust by detonating the reactants and by greatly increasing the mass flow rate.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.