I Designed an Aerospike Rocket Engine - Is it any Better?

In this video, I design and test an aerospike rocket engine to compare its performance to a traditional bell nozzle. I hope you can also learn something new about this unique type of rocket engine as you follow my exploration of these interesting propulsion systems!
Be sure to comment, like, and subscribe if you would like to see more rocket engine videos!

[@AshtonCoolman]

This video could be used as a resume for Boeing, NASA, Lockheed, SpaceX and more. You're a true engineer and I hope you have an amazing, profitable career in the industry

[@Aurorajunior7321]

You are totally right, but I don’t know if anyone should go work for Boeing if they value their life

[@Aurorajunior7321]

@@1islam1 shut up.

[@boltinc2334]

Nobody asked

[@tibr]

> Boeing Lol

[@Worker225]

Idk if he even needs a real job.

[@Pronobozo]

Best kinda of sponsorship is when a company gets excited about the project and progress.

[@diGritz1]

We did it all the time. Someone came in with something for a custom gun or race car part, basically anything that sounded interesting and would do it for the cost of material.

[@sicstar]

Now you just need to get a company excited about 3D printing you the nozzle again from Inconel with added cooling channels where you can run the fuel trough for some cooling. Excellent work, very interesting and good presentation!

[@ltheden]

could you not just ceramic coat the parts that experience extreme temperature?

[@sicstar]

@@ltheden yesn, that would defo help a bit but the core temp would still rise to unhealthy levels after some time.

[@youtubeisapublisher6407]

@@ltheden You can, but ceramic coatings of course tend to degrade under high physical stresses, I could imagine that the shockwaves and vibration inside of a rocket engine would probably make most coatings flake away after a few firings. The upside of inconel or hastelloy is that like any metal alloys as long as the stresses are within their tolerances you can constantly use parts for quite some time before they suffer any kind of mechanical failure. Internal fuel-as-coolant channels can be quite useful for aerospikes in particular though because of the particular heat management issues with the spike. You can either run your fuel in a loop or through a simple hollow space in the spike to provide cooling via heat exchange, quite efficient if you're using copper or inconel as your engine material. You could also run a film cooling design where some small amount of fuel is dumped out of the base of the spike to wick away heat via film cooling. If he ever graduates to a gas generator design you could run an open cycle gas generator design where the exhaust gas is vented through pores at the base of the spike, fuel rich exhaust gas will provide similar film cooling while also getting burned a second time, recouping some of the inherent inefficiencies of an open cycle design. Of course gas generators are a whole massive step beyond what he's working on right now, turbomachinery even at the small demonstrator engine size are a combination of headache inducing complexity and very tight unforgiving tolerances.

[@sicstar]

@@youtubeisapublisher6407 Excellent explanation. Ty for taking time to write that. o7

[@bluebottle4677]

Nice work but I think your little engine is performing way better than you think. I’d encourage you to look at your instrumentation calibration and data processing because the Isp figures you quote are almost impossibly low. Even for a cold gas thruster running on just air you should be getting Isp figures of at least 40s, even if your thrust coefficient (nozzle performance) is poor and the air really cold. You can check this by calculating the c* figure for cold air, which should be around 430m/s and multiplying by an estimated thrust coefficient (usually around 1.4 for bell nozzles at sea level) and dividing by g0 (9.81) which should give you somewhere around 60s Isp for cold air. Ok, air isn’t the world’s best oxidiser but your hot firings should be giving you Isp figures of at least 150s. Even if the injector mixing is poor and you’re over-expanding a bunch, the Isp still shouldn’t be as bad as the figures shown in the notebooks and graphs shown in the video. So take another look at the data keep up the good work.

[@magicsasafras3414]

Yeah, ive been wondering why they are so low.

[@atomicrust574]

I Highly recommend you look into Expansion-deflection nozzles- They are essentially an aerospike turned inside out again such that they almost resemble a traditional bell nozzle, except they "plug" the center. because exhaust gasses are deflected against the chamber walls on the interior of the bell, you get both the altitude compensating effect of an Aerospike and the cooling of a traditional bell. I don't know too much more about them than what I did for my Science fair project, so you should definitely do some digging on your own- its very understudied!

[@Shattered3582]

I have never heard of those before

[@ryanrising2237]

Dang, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen an aerospike nozzle actually do better than a (seemingly) properly designed conventional one. Good job, and even if it hadn’t shown an improvement this would be very impressive work.

[@FedericoLucchi]

Properly insane! I've seen so many Integza's attempted rocket builds, but yours is just flawless! Total respect!

[@snjert8406]

Ayden, this is incredible. I have no idea how old you are, but you sound pretty young to me. I really hope you make it far in your life, with things you love. This project is awesome and I’m so happy your video showed up on my recommended page.

[@Aurorajunior7321]

I’ve said it before and I will certainly say it again: you’re Chanel and the stuff you do on it is easily one of my favorites and I wish you all the best and more. Any time you say “ would you like to see…” my and everyone else who watches your works immediate response is a resounding yes. Keep it up, I have no doubt you will be sending liquid rockets to space sooner than you think.

[@userPrehistoricman]

Hmmm... what about a Chanel fuelled rocket engine?

[@Aurorajunior7321]

@@userPrehistoricman ????

[@C-M-E]

Provided you moved to something like a 30 gallon reservoir via air compressor, this would be a phenomenal use case for ceramic composite nozzles. I've been developing extreme high temperature one part formulas the last few years that cure via heat and started down building a large injection machine for making hot end jet engine parts. If you ever take up molding your own parts, give me a shout, I can send a batch your way.

[@veritaspk]

Incredible commitment to the hobby, pure pleasure to watch.

[@ivolol]

That's the kind of sponsorship that one can actually feel positive about

[@rizkyp]

That shock diamonds look awesome.

[@dextermorgan1]

NASA was 80%+ done with a SSTO space craft in the early 90's when the funding was pulled. It used Aerospike engines. The name escapes me at the moment. It's a very interesting vehicle. They had supposedly solved all of the engineering problems. Makes me wonder if Aerospikes or SSTO vehicles lived on in the black world. We've had the tech for a long time. Edit. It was the X-33 as shown at the end of this video.

[@jedswift]

Not technically an aerospike nozzle, but an annular external expansion nozzle. The aerospike part was shown in a number of your diagrams, that being the truncation of the physical expansion plug and relying on a recirculating wake captured behind the plug. The advantages being reduced weight and heating as well as responding well to dumping the low molecular weight turbopump exhaust gas into this region and the blunt aft surface that may conceivably be used as a heat shield for aero entry. Both MacDonnell Douglass and Boeing explored a number of launch vehicle concepts using this technology over the year. Sadly, none to date have made it to flight. Excellent exploration of the concept.

[@intellectualiconoclasm3264]

This work is magnificently impressive for your age and budget! Great respect.

[@RyeOnHam]

I would be interested to know if you can truncate the cone (maybe make it half the protrusion it currently is) and get similar results.

[@Newwinggarage]

Bro, this is some of the coolest stuff I have seen on KZbin. How has this not blown up yet?

[@Kevin-qj7fp]

this is the kind of person id want to be: experimenting and testing and developing future engineering in practice especially nuclear engineering in terms of space engines

[@Nonama-w4x]

Great video. Thank you !

[@robcuthbert8257]

Great work, keep it up :)

[@fernandoblanco1471]

Excellent Job

[@segment932]

That was awesome.

[@xymaryai8283]

this video is helping me understand why its so difficult, the impressive compressive and heat loads and the fact that the spike is also part of the combustion chamber, running enough cooling through it would be quite difficult.

[@voinea12]

Integza where you at

[@airwaffle]

wow i am also making such a engine! awesome vid

[@tmanF4]

This is super cool! Excited to see more

[@alpheusmadsen8485]

I remember learning about aerospike nozzles a few years ago, and thinking "Hey, that's interesting! It would be neat if the engineering hurdles can be overcome, too!" I was also surprised to realize that they are already in use: I saw them in the exhaust systems for helicopter and airplane jet engines! While not strictly rocket engines, I can see why they might be used, to smooth out the exhaust in ways that don't depend on the density of the air. I also suspect that they can be used there *because* they aren't rocket engines -- they don't suffer from the same heat dissipation issues that rocket engines do, due to the lower temperatures involved.

[@JinKee]

Somebody has to invent cheap metal 3d printers so talented people can invent new kinds of engines with internal cooling channels

[@LowSetSun]

Very cool! Would be great to see you build a more accurate test stand, and eventually building a flight-capable engine of your design.

[@SFS-V]

Your channel is underrated

[@wheelless]

Great project. Very cool build, great explanations and resources. Hope to see a lot more videos from you 🙏🤗 at what point can you make it “mobile”? Can you use it to propel a small go kart, or maybe a skateboard? 🤔

[@torstengedack7020]

That is a very clever and awesome Video. I'm not sure about the stability of the aerospike nozzle for longer durations of firing. But maybe you think about any graphite layer on the hot side with a thermal blocking under.

[@skyhype42]

Just found this channel, looks good. I find it funny that you use a scale to measure the thrust. Greetings from Germany

[@richardknapp570]

Nicely done!

[@rangerchuckstube]

Rotational combustion would work well here good work hope you the best.

[@myparadiseonbantayanisland9030]

Can you use tungsten for the hotter parts

[@diGritz1]

Machinist #1: I know it's a bit behind schedule but I'm getting through it come hell or high water. By the way what are you working on. #2: Oh just some side project someone brought in. Charged him $20 for material cause it seemed interesting. #1: The one you've been working on for a week non-stop and blowing off other jobs? #2: Yes........................ #1: Can I help? Yes it's an extreme example but we did it quite often with things like custom parts for guns or race car parts. Interesting projects float to the top. Find a small shop and go talk to them about doing small jobs as cheap as possible. Not every shop will do it but you'll always find at least 1 or 2. You can also be sure that it will make it into their "Past Jobs List". ......Also experienced with small custom aerospace projects. It helps machinists keep many of their skills not normally used from becoming rusty. It's also a nice way to possibly score older equipment they no longer use.

[@Kargoneth]

Thanks, Ayden! Thanks, Husky Machining! Thanks, Mach diamonds!

[@Muhammad11kv]

Nice experiment

[@benmcreynolds8581]

These are pretty successful little nozzles. I would love to see what you could achieve if you had the chance to utilize a Metal 3D printer. I feel like you would be able to stumble up on to some pretty cool designs

[@angleofattack5942]

ZL3 mentioned 🔥🔥🔥

[@malachiteofmethuselah9713]

I'd love to see a high voltage difference between the nozzle tip and the outter ring to see if it would act as a sort of an afterburner, by accelerating some of the charged particles in the exhaust stream.

[@remiheneault8208]

Indeed! But electrically insulating the tip of the aerospike would be quite the challenge with temperatures involved.

[@saltedpommes2906]

Hey man, nice video, I love people DIYing Rocket engines but this got me thinking: Would it be possible to cool the Aerospike by running the fuel line into the tip where it's depressurized and then back up for cumbustion?

[@michaelbuckers]

Aerospike has this weird combination of features that make it simultaneously great and completely impractical. Its entire benefit is that it's self-calibrating to the external pressure, so it doesn't suffer from reduced efficiency from under- or over-expansion. But it's not like you will use the same engine to go from launchpad to orbit anyway, you'd be dropping stages, so the actual benefit is marginal. And while having higher efficiency it's also much heavier and much less effective at pre-heating the fuel due to tiny surface area, which completely offsets the efficiency advantage.

[@7ruthVVizard]

Impressive backyard rocket setup, it must be nice to have a nozzle made to such a low tolerance after working with that bell nozzle :P

[@meanman6992]

If you had the budget for it. A 3D printed inconel steel aero spike with passages in it for LPG to flow through before reaching the combustion chamber would be super super cool to see how far you could push it as it would surely handle the heat far far better as inconel steel is a very very high temperature steel that keeps its strength as it gets very hot very well compared to almost any other metal.

[@atrumluminarium]

I wonder how it would perform if you truncate the spice right where the burn marks developed. Apart from weight saving, you also won't need much cooling if the part that's getting the hottest isn't there to begin with. It can maybe even be used for bypass air.

[@BigfootGoforth]

I would say expanding this video but incorporating cooling into the nozzle so you could run liquid propane and have that as the expander

[@veryInteresting_]

Very cool. I wonder if the surface finish on the spike has any noticeable difference in performance. looking at it up close at 8:56 I think it can be made smoother

[@HuskyMachining]

Badass! if only I had a metal 3d printer, then we could try a regenative cooling aerospike nozzle

[@linecraftman3907]

You could use a normal 3d printer with metal infused filament then bake out the plastic but it's not easy

[@HuskyMachining]

@linecraftman3907 i had seen that stuff and it does look difficult to keep tolerances with all the shrinking the part does during the bake out.

[@DonRaynor]

KZbin Aerospace field is progressing so fast! i'll be excited to see who will make the first functional cooled aerospike on youtube.

[@funkycowsx2]

Cool.

[@杵渕亮子]

Thanks...Very good video...

[@L0615T1C]

Well done, very cool

[@markrix]

Pretty good mate, how about h2o2 and a liquid catalyst?

[@petersvancarek]

I notice severe heating in place where first supersonic diamond is located. Maybe if you truncate the tip of the nozzle, it could help with overheating issue?

[@Reptex_cs]

One thing I haven't seen on YT yet is a miniature h2/o2 rocket engine. Is it not possible? Would love to see it and you seem like the guy to ask.

[@youngbloodbear9662]

Well done!

[@dougaltolan3017]

No no no no NO! Never use a lathe as a milling machine! Thats what drill presses are for.

[@osotrop]

awesome

[@msbealo]

Would a linear aerospike nozzle be better for cooling? Linear channels from one end to the other sound easier than finding a cooling route through the spike.

[@AndrewZonenberg]

What about making an aerospike out of an ablative material like phenolic composite? Would you see enough dimensional changes over the course of a flight burn to be an issue? Would the roughness of the char on the surface cause problems in the boundary layer? If the aerodynamics worked out this would allow you to hit higher efficiency by using a stoichiometric fuel mix without having to worry about melting your nozzle.

[@ZacLowing]

Could the air flow be improved if you streamlined the base that has the hole the spike sticks thru? Round the edges and extend it go improve the area part

[@zuthalsoraniz6764]

The oxide layer suggests most of the spike, except for the very tip, never exceeded 400 C. I would be interested in another test (probably after you have done further classification of the intact nozzle with better data acquisation) that sees how cutting that tip off impacts the performance. After all, a lot of professional aerospike designs are truncated, since that greatly reduces the thermal issues, and recirculating gas behind the base as I gather should mostly replace the cut-off tip for fluid dynamics purposes. Cutting off the tip of course also reduces weight.

[@madmurdoch2000]

when looking at airospike's you need to look at the "Rotary detanation eninge" tested by NASA on the 23rd december 2023. Due to the way that detonation engines work using a engine bell design just doesnt work all that well but a aerospike really does lend it's self to the concept.

[@Horus2Osiris]

Ceramic center cone? Nice flame and mach diamonds in your cone. Sweet. Go big, or...

[@TheBowersj]

can you add a venturi nozzle to the tip of your aerospike and test the thrust? You can add threads and unscrew it to find the best thrust by trial and error?

[@fletchertaylor5593]

for cooling, what if you cooled the nozzle with channeling through it, which your cooled gases travel through before reaching the ignition chamber? it would greatly increase the machining processes, but would solve some heating issues?

[@peterxyz3541]

would a ceramic spike be better?

[@billshiff2060]

7:05 I don't see how the annular orifice can have a better Cd than the bell. It has massively more surface area(friction) than the bell. The charts you show are for subsonic flow right? That won't apply for sonic flows I think. Great video by the way!

[@dougaltolan3017]

High flow, high pressure regulators aren't the only option... They ars designed to be "black box" stand alone items. You could roll your own. Using a spear valve and chamber pressure sensor you can achieve the same goal. If chamber pressure sensor dosent work well, then upstream pressure or actual flow rate could be used. Sure, you still have the issue of a large high pressure reservoir, but an off the shelf scuba cylinder can take ~240 bar.

[@박꼬꼬-q1p]

Very very good

[@denvera1g1]

5:50 your chamber seems to be seperating from the housing at the back of the.... mixing chamber? Combustion chamber? Looks like it slid out by maybe 2mm probably structurally fine, but may have affected your geometry Edit the outer flow guide for the aerospike also seems to be expanding

[@aspopulvera9130]

is silicon also being used as a sort of heat shielding?

[@Estuardomendez13]

would you try a linear aerospike?

[@kayakMike1000]

Well.... What kind of temps are you dealing with?

[@TheOmegaFleet]

Would it be possible to cross drill the nozzle internally so the low temp fuel acts as a heat sink and pulls the heat out of the spike with the flow of fuel through the drilled spike?

[@burnologist229]

So what I got from this video is that your gonna build a rotating detonation engine RiGht? As it turns out if you pump fuel through a rotating airospike. When the fuel exits is will make a spiral which with the correct conditions can detonate.

[@HughJanus-o3e]

Can you 3d print an aerospike with built in regenerative cooling?

[@eastindiaV]

I think the middle part of the aerospike would be better if made of graphite, or some type of carbonate.. It would be more heat resistant, but less impact resistant, but it should last a lot longer.

[@anubisvex3309]

What if you made it flow into a vortex with rifling/spiraling?

[@robertlackey7212]

If your engine was one of 4 in a squaire pattern , could it be turned on and off fast enough to provide steering ?

[@kooskroos]

Can the spike be cooled?

[@ProfessorPickle]

good question... Ayden and I were talking about that this morning when he dropped the video... it looks like the best way to cool it is to have the aerospike 3D printed with cooling channels, which would lighten the weight a bit as well...

[@jorgeverdugo6071]

if you add different textures or design on the surface of the metal nozzle, you get different performance? like lines of circles or shark skin

[@jorgeverdugo6071]

what happen if you add a electric charge to the nozzle ?

[@jorgeverdugo6071]

kzbin.info7iQ9_X9sy10

[@Chris27-]

very nice

[@tedjones-ho2zk]

Can you combine both Aerospike and Bell nozzles together into one engine.

[@BartJBols]

Could you not make the aerospike lighter by making it hollow and have the propellant cool it from the inside at the same time?

[@Snarlacc]

Do these 2 sound as different in person as on video? The bell nozzle sounds rougher, more choppy than the aerospike.

[@AydenWardellAerospace]

They did sound slightly different in person, the aerospike sounded slightly smoother but it is a lot more similar in person. The cameras did not do justice to the sound because of how ridiculously loud they both were

[@Snarlacc]

​@@AydenWardellAerospace Probably not something the audio ever could do justice - not without giving people hearing damage.

[@corruptedmineral]

sorry for stupid question for i am not well-versed in aerospace engineering, but what is the difference between this and a typical scramjet engine? is it only shape?

[@AydenWardellAerospace]

The difference between this and a scramjet engine is mainly in the speed that combustion is occurring. This engine has high-pressure subsonic combustion that is accelerated through a nozzle, whereas scramjets use shockwaves inside the combustion chamber to compress the air and sustain a supersonic flame front.

[@mikegLXIVMM]

What if you made the aerospike hollow and used a water spray inside to cool it?

[@frandeharo146]

amazing!

[@obsidianjane4413]

@8:45 Its because your spike is too long. All its doing is acting as a conductor, drawing heat from the exhaust on to the spike and the soot is the exhaust boundary layer being "baked" onto it. RDE is a completely different and much more complicated can of worms.

[@Meow_Yeager]

Put a weight scale in front of it to see how much force it puts or how many kgs/lbs it can push by seeing how much weight it shows in the scale

[@mrowl7838]

I plan to research and design a engine myself for a program funded by nasa to get people early on into aerospace. With help from a aeropspace professor i think its possible

[@noahgossett6134]

Scaled up the weight never adds up, but would be great for rcs system with its expansion efficiency and since it's periodically used the aerospike rcs system wouldnt over heat with cop42 even out of atmosphere

[@jaxsonsimpson-harris3113]

gonna be kinda imposibble with the tools you have but try and make a rotating destination rocket engine like NASA is working on. I think integza is wanting to do that too.

[@benjaminbirdsey6874]

Right, you said it, "uncooled aerospike." Large scale test engines have used a method where (cryogenic fuel) was run through the spike and ejected from the tip. As a stopgap, couldn't you drill through the center of the spike (gasp) and fun compressed air through it? If you match the pressure at the tip of the spike, the exhaust shouldn't know the difference.

[@StephenMcGregor1986]

Just need some Hafnium Diboride now

[@danialmelloman8403]

Use a turbine behind the output for that tipped exhaust to pull more into it make sure blades aren't Wong side will mess up but if right direction it should cool the casing more and give more efficiency to to output and more efficient burn