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From the wiki page linked here, this looks like a toroidal spike. I wonder what sort of gas they use for the base bleed.

Several versions of the design exist, differentiated by their shapes. In the toroidal aerospike the spike is bowl-shaped with the exhaust exiting in a ring around the outer rim. In theory this requires an infinitely long spike for best efficiency, but by blowing a small amount of gas out of the center of a shorter truncated spike (like base bleed in an artillery shell), something similar can be achieved.

[-] nyoooom@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure those are several small distinct engines, but at high altitude with a large expansion ratio it will kind of work like an aerospike

this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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