Rockets are easy, burn fuel, go up. But anyone that works on them knows that reality is much harder: high pressure systems, high speed turbomachinery, high temperatures, and highly violent vibrations. Deal with all of that and you\u2019re still left with an intrinsically inefficient system since fuel doesn\u2019t burn completely before it\u2019s ejected. What rotating detonation rocket engines do is rethink the first principles by instead exploding fuel in controlled bursts, burning only what is necessary for each impulse, resulting in 10-15% increased efficiency in thrust to fuel ratio. It\u2019s an enticing idea that\u2019s been perpetually in development since the 50\u2019s; although there are no moving parts, the shock wave becomes the moving part, and that has been hard to scale without exploding the whole engine instead of just the fuel. Juno Propulsion looked at this problem though, and decided it was a solution, because even at small scales their technology is a perfect fit for spacecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n