The race to field reusable hypersonic aircraft just got a whole lot hotter, with GE Aerospace announcing a breakthrough in high-speed jet engine design that could potentially allow aircraft to exceed Mach 10. This new propulsion system would combine several different types of air-breathing jet engines to create a combined engine that could make hypersonic aircraft a practical reality in the not-too-distant future. But what sets GE’s new turbine-based combined cycle engine apart from other similar efforts is what makes it so exciting… Rotating Detonation Combustion. Let’s talk about what that is… and what this all means.
