Venus Aerospace Stargazer Spaceplane

It’s not often we get to use the term hypersonic aircraft twice in just a couple of weeks, but here we are. The rendering you see here is known as the Venus Aerospace Stargazer, and it’s meant for passenger travel at speeds of up to Mach 9 (over 6,900 MPH). The aircraft uses conventional jet engines at takeoff and then transitions to what’s known as a rotating-detonation engine, where one or more detonations continuously occur around a channel. It’s known as detonative combustion, and the results expand when the plane reaches supersonic speeds. The Stargazer will supposedly transport up to a dozen passengers at an altitude of 170,000 feet or almost five times the altitude of a conventional passenger airliner. Venus is working on an unmanned 20-foot prototype that should reach Mach 5 and then plans to build a full-size prototype.