Build a new kind of rocket engine and the world will beat a path to your door. Or at least that\u2019s how it\u2019s worked out for Venus Aerospace and its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), an ultra-efficient way to hurl stuff into the sky.<\/p>\n
The company was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife duo, CEO Sassie Duggleby and CTO Andrew Duggleby, with the idea of developing clean-flying hypersonic jets for passenger travel. But after successfully demonstrating the engine last year, their plans changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened when we flew last May is the world looked at us and said, \u2018oh my gosh, you have a working RDRE, would you sell us one?\u2019 And that wasn\u2019t what we were expecting,\u201d Sassie Duggleby told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
Now, the company is focused on hypersonic weapons development, replacing the solid rocket motors that power many missiles with its own thruster, and high-speed space vehicles that appeal to the military.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur propulsion architecture combines efficiency, throttling, reusability and manufacturability in a way that
customers need for real defense and space missions,\u201d Andrew Duggleby said in a statement. \u201cWe are focused on translating technical progress into reliable systems for operational use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venus announced a $90 million Series B round today that aims to put the company in a position to do just that by funding testing and development work on specific vehicle designs with potential customers. The funding round was led by Mercury Fund and saw participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper
Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, and Green Sands Equity.<\/p>\n
The RDRE was dreamed up in the mid-20th century as a theoretically more efficient way to launch rockets; instead of burning propellants in a round chamber, the engine creates a continual supersonic wave of combustion that rotates through a circular channel. (Here\u2019s a visualization.) The idea promised to waste less propellant, but the complex physics proved tricky to understand and control.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s changed in recent years, with the advent of 3D printing and better simulations. The first working test took place in 2020 at the University of Central Florida. NASA demonstrated an RDRE on the ground for the first time in 2022, while Japan\u2019s space agency JAXA fired one for a few seconds in space in 2021. Venus\u2019 2025 test was the first time an RDRE launched a rocket into flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first started Venus, the entire story was there\u2019s a new type of rocket engine, we think it\u2019s going to put out more heat and more thrust and be more efficient, but we think we know how to keep it from melting,\u201d Sassie Duggleby said. \u201cThat\u2019s been a lot of what our work has been over the last four years \u2014 how do we keep this engine from melting \u2014 and we\u2019ve solved that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, the company was awarded a grant from the Texas Space Commission to build a new, larger test stand. That will be key for Venus: The longest it has fired its engine during 600 tests is 32 seconds, but it will likely need to burn for at least six to 15 minutes to meet the goals of its customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/07\/08\/venus-aerospace-raises-90m-series-b-to-build-a-new-kind-of-rocket-engine\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/VenusAero_RDRE_Flight_05.jpg?resize=939,1200″] Build a new kind of rocket engine and the world will beat a path to your door. Or at least that\u2019s how it\u2019s worked out for Venus Aerospace and its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), an ultra-efficient way to hurl stuff into the sky. The company was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-2034392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2034392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}