A Dazzling New Detonation Engine Could Ignite Hypersonic Travel

"If humans want to travel faster, they need better—and, inevitably, more
complicated—engines. Recently, engineers have investigated ways to
harness the chaotic power of explosions into an engine that can push
past speeds far beyond the comparatively slow realm of conventional
chemical combustion. These are known as detonation engines, they come in
all types of designs—including pulse detonation engines, oblique
detonation engines, and rotating detonation engines—and they each have
their own quirks with regards to how they achieve this
perilous-yet-powerful propulsion.
Recently, rotating detonation engines (RDEs) have started to show some
promise. In fact, earlier this year, the Houston-based Venus Aerospace
achieved one of the longest sustained tests of its own RDE. This engine
combusts its fuel and oxidizer in a rotating ring-shaped channel, and
the resulting shockwaves create a sustained combustion reaction that
makes the engine more efficient than conventional rockets.
Now, a new engine designed by engineers at Tsinghua University in
Beijing, China is building off the success of these types of engines,
but introducing a high-speed rotor to further stabilize the detonation.
It’s called a ram-rotor detonation engine (RRDE), and its creators hope
that it will overcome some of the shortcomings of a typical RDE—poor
thrust continuity, high starting Mach numbers (meaning it operates
better at super and hypersonic speeds than at subsonic speeds), and poor
performance gains, for instance.
“The original intention of developing this new engine is to improve the
structures of rotating detonation engines,” Haocheng Wen, co-author of
an article detailing the engine in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics,
said in a press statement. “This concept is also inspired by the
ram-rotor compressor.” "
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63120790/ram-rotor-detonation-engine/