Is There a Future for Air Spike Engines?

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On paper, the air spike engine is more efficient than a rotary one. But in practice, it's unreliable and hard to cool with limited fuel supply. You can increase thrust of an air spike by making it bigger but at the end of the day, it just isn't physically possible.

Tim Dodd is host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel, where he teaches about rocket engines and all things space travel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:18) – SpaceX rockets
(26:56) – Falcon 9
(31:08) – Starship
(35:27) – SpaceX rocket engines
(43:05) – Elon Musk
(58:41) – Twitter
(1:04:46) – How rocket engines work
(1:09:37) – Rocket fuel
(1:13:03) – Rocket engine cycles
(1:25:27) – Rocket cooling
(1:40:24) – Multistage rockets
(1:43:57) – Single-stage-to-orbit
(1:49:33) – Aerospike engine
(1:57:18) – Greatest car engine of all time
(2:02:27) – Starship
(2:05:19) – Wet dress rehearsal
(2:11:29) – Landing
(2:25:47) – Seeing starship in person
(2:34:54) – Starship orbital test
(2:41:32) – Gwynne Shotwell
(2:46:43) – dearMoon project
(3:05:46) – Fear of death
(3:14:12) – Everyday Astronaut origin story
(3:40:04) – Soviet Rocket Engine History
(3:58:51) – Russia, China, USA
(4:13:20) – Starlink
(4:21:06) – First human on Mars
(4:24:04) – Moon landing
(4:30:11) – Nuclear propulsion
(4:37:51) – Bob Lazar
(4:44:54) – Aliens
(4:48:42) – Sci-fi books
(4:52:00) – Long-term space travel
(4:58:47) – SpaceX competitors
(5:10:07) – Kerbal Space Program
(5:16:33) – Advice for young people