Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "Aerospike Rocket Engine (3D Printed)" video.

  1. The common thought is that a rocket engine works simply by ejecting a hot high speed gas one way and the rocket engine moves the other way. It's a little more complicated than that. Yes you have a hot high speed gas but that gas also has high pressure. It is this high pressure interacting with the engine bell that works to transfer that pressure into thrust. An aerospike is an inside out engine bell. But since there is pressure involved here what if take the aerospike and squash it so that instead it is much larger in diameter than its length. No we move the combustion chambers to the center of the engine and flow this high pressure gas out radially across the surface. At the the perimeter of the surface we place a fence that extends above the surface. The gas flow then piles up against this outer area to get the maximum amount of pressure against the surface as possible. Because this surface is by design handling the temperatures of a hot gas . We also use this surface for a heat shield for re-entry. Would this work? A simple test rig using propane or even water under pressure would be fairly easy to build.
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