Build a new type of rocket engine and the world will make its way to your door. Or at least that’s how it turned out for Venus Aerospace and its Rotary Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), an ultra-efficient way to launch things into the sky.

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 aircraft for passenger travel. But after a successful demonstration of the engine last year, their plans changed.

“What happened when we flew last May is that the world looked at us and said, ‘My God, you have a working RDRE, would you sell us one?’ And that was not what we expected,” Sassie Duggleby told TechCrunch.

Now, the company is focused on developing hypersonic weapons, replacing the solid rocket motors that power many missiles with its own propellant and high-speed space vehicles that appeal to the military.

“Our propulsion architecture combines efficiency, acceleration, reusability and manufacturing capacity in a way that
“Customers need it for real defense and space missions,” Andrew Duggleby said in a statement. “We are focused on translating technical progress into reliable systems for operational use.”

Venus today announced a $90 million Series B round 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 included participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6 and Draper.
Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital and Green Sands Equity.

The RDRE was devised 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 continuous supersonic combustion wave that rotates through a circular channel. (Here’s a visualization.) The idea promised to waste less propellant, but the complex physics proved difficult to understand and control.

That has 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 Earth for the first time in 2022, while the Japanese space agency JAXA fired one for a few seconds in space in 2021. The 2025 Venus test was the first time an RDRE launched a rocket into flight.

“When we started on Venus, the whole story was that there was a new type of rocket engine, we think it will put out more heat and more thrust and be more efficient, but we think we know how to keep it from melting,” Sassie Duggleby said. “That’s been a big part of our work for the last four years: how do we keep this engine from melting, and we’ve figured that out.”

This year, the company received a grant from the Texas Space Commission to build a new, larger test bed. That will be key for Venus: the longest it has run its engine over 600 tests is 32 seconds, but it will probably need to run for at least 6 to 15 minutes to meet its customers’ goals.