A Texas startup has raised $91m to build a rocket engine most of the industry once wrote off as too hard. Venus Aerospace announced a $91m Series B to develop its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine, or RDRE. Mercury Fund led the round.
The backers read like a defence roll-call. Lockheed Martin Ventures joined, alongside MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, Green Sands Equity and others. The money will fund testing and vehicle designs built with specific customers. It is a fraction of the sums flowing to Europe’s space giants, but pointed.
A different kind of rocket
Most rockets burn fuel in a round chamber. An RDRE instead sends a continuous supersonic wave of combustion spinning around a ring. In theory it wastes less propellant. In practice the physics proved brutal, and the idea sat on the shelf for decades.
Better 3D printing and simulation changed that. The first working test came in 2020 at the University of Central Florida. NASA ran a ground demo in 2022, and Japan’s JAXA fired one in space in 2021. Venus went further last May, when its RDRE became the first to launch a rocket into flight.
