I've never looked at a rocket engine and thought"well that's dull", but this design makes all the others look positively pedestrian. That's because, rather than the traditional process of countless engineers spending months, even years manually engineering a model in programs like CAD, this one was, its Large Computational Engineering Model.
Air-punching stuff, isn't it? Copper seems initially like an odd choice for a rocket engine given its low melting point, but apparently it enables"compact high-performance engines" when actively cooled. For reasons that, to my admittedly dull mind, remain unclear. Still, the more you know.Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The test fire was successful, as you can see, and the engine performed a full 12 second long-duration burn. That's enough for Leap 71 to confidently declare it capable of a steady-state, which means it can essentially operated as long as needed in its capacity as a powerful booster. "Innovation in space propulsion is hard, and costly. With our approach, we hope to make space more accessible for everyone."