New Hybrid Rocket Engine

Boeing and Rolls-Royce Invest in a New Hybrid Rocket Engine

The best features of a jet engine and rocket engine combined into one design.

By Avery Thompson

REL

The U.K. could soon get its own next-gen rocket engine, thanks to a partnership between Boeing and Rolls-Royce. The two companies are investing in a new type of jet engine/rocket engine hybrid that could take payloads to space much more efficiently than any current rocket.


The rocket engine in question is being developed by British company Reaction Engines Limited. Boeing and Rolls-Royce have invested a total of nearly $38 million in this company.

REL seeks to build a type of rocket engine that also functions as a hypersonic jet engine. The goal is that the jet engine could reach Mach 5.5 before switching to rocket fuel for the remaining journey into space.

This hybrid engine design offers numerous hypothetical advantages, but the biggest one is fuel efficiency. Using its jet capabilities while in the atmosphere ultimately means the whole trip requires less rocket fuel. It's the same general idea behind the enormous Stratolaunch aircraft that would use a huge plane to carry rockets into the sky and launch them from on high, except all built into a single engine.

In theory, this type of technology might make it possible to build a rocket that could travel from the ground all the way into space in a single step, whereas current rockets rely on multiple stages. A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) rocket would be able to carry payloads without expensive booster stages. If such a rocket were also designed to be reusable, it could be even more affordable than a SpaceX rocket.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. The REL engine hasn’t been built yet, and there’s no rocket as of now for the engine to be attached to. But if REL is successful, it could at least show that an SSTO-capable engine is possible and pave the way for a hybrid future.

Source: BBC