SpaceX starship systems is set to launch to orbit for the first time today, April 17th. Will it herald a change in space transportation economics? Today Tuesday 17th April SpaceX will attempt its first orbital Starship system launch. There will be a number of firsts including the size and thrust (1200tonnes of propellant and 1500tonnes of thrust) and number of simultaneously firing engines (33) on the launch vehicle, the largest ever; the fact that the vehicle has been designed to allow a crew of around 100 to travel to Mars, and most notably that the entire vehicle including, for the first ti ..read more

Rocket Engineering has been successful in winning funding from the UK Space Agency to work with partners Tokamak Energy, Magdrive, and Astroscale to explore how superconducting magnet technology drawn from the fusion energy industry can be used to support the UK's Space Surveillance & Tracking Programme, in particular the use of high thrust electric propulsion for Active Debris Removal . We will report on this project, the largest one which Rocket Engineering has yet delivered, in our next blog post. Find out more about this project and the 12 others funded to support more sustainable spac ..read more

Why are rockets fundamental to our exploration of Mars? Rocket Engineering Ltd have been contributing to an article on Mars exploration, to be published in the Royal Aeronautical Society’s ‘Aerospace’ magazine and to appear in its ‘Aerospace Insight’ Blog later this summer. The article will, among other things, explain some of the challenges of getting to Mars. An excerpt is below: – First, why explore Mars? Mars is one of Earth’s nearest neighbours, and has the most Earthlike surface conditions of any other body in the solar system. Life, if it does still exist on Mars is likely to be well h ..read more

This used to be available on the Bloodhound SSC website. As the project has moved on considerably from when I was involved, I wanted to share this (credit goes to Stefan Marjoram who created this video while working for Bloodhound) to help people understand the basics of rocket propulsion, in a slightly unusual context. Enjoy! And thank you, Stefan (& Bloodhound)… https://video.wixstatic.com/video/da3d97_bb0c06ae75a947b19b27aa984e3e1511/360p/mp4/file.mp4 How rockets work! (Stefan Marjoram / Bloodhound TV ..read more