September 17, 2023 – Today at Stoke Space’s test site in Moses Lake, Washington, we successfully conducted a vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) developmental test flight of our reusable second stage rocket. During this test,...
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.
From the wiki page linked here, this looks like a toroidal spike. I wonder what sort of gas they use for the base bleed.
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