Pulsar Fusion is a British nuclear fusion company currently based in Bletchley. They have been developing high-powered chemical rocket engines and testing their green hybrid rocket engines in Switzerland for the past months. However, they are facing limited funding to continue their projects.
Now, the UK company is setting a target of raising $264 million (£200 million) to continue their projects of making groundbreaking rocket engines for space travel to rival American space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, which are currently leading the space travel industry.
A 10,000-pound thrust hybrid rocket motor is tested at Stennis Space Center's E-1 test facility. A hybrid rocket motor is a cross between a solid rocket and a liquid-fueled engine. It uses environmentally safe solid fuel and liquid oxygen.
Pulsar Fusion's Green Hybrid Rocket Engine
Pulsion Fusion is just one of the few companies aiming to develop rocket engines capable of flying at hyper speeds based on nuclear fusion technology.
Interesting Engineering reported that the company conducted a static test on November 17 and 18, 2021, in which they fired their hybrid rocket engines into full thrust to measure their performance at the Ministry of Defense military base in Salisbury.
The company's hybrid rocket engine test produced plume features, like supersonic shock diamonds, which are usually seen in a high temperature, high mass flow rate rocket exhaust. The press release shared to Interesting Engineering reported that the "green" hybrid rocket engine burns nitrous oxide (NO2) oxidizer, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and oxygen.
Meanwhile, the liquid oxidizer of the rocket engine is fed under a regulated pressure through a control valve into the combustion chamber with patented technology.
Then on November 26, they demonstrated the engine's capability in the sleepy mountain of Gstaad in Switzerland, Wales Online reported. Like the earlier test, it created an impressive visual plume of supersonic shock diamonds. The rocket engine is capable of launching a small rocket to 10s of miles of altitude above the UK airspace.
Pulsar Fusion Raising Funds to Continue Developing World-Class Tech
Pulsar Fusion CEO Richard Dinan said that British companies aiming for space should go for the international level by achieving technological milestones on time and budget while also being environmentally conscious. Their objective is to serve as a force for good by building world-class technologies.
In an interview with Express.co.uk, Dinan told the news outlet that it would depend on the funding to be as capable as SpaceX and Blue Origin. He added that they have the ambition to raise $264 million (£200 million) in the next few years to build significant tests and pointed out that the company does not see any reason to hand it all over to an American company to do that.
"We want to show ourselves as not just a little British company, but a company that is capable of demonstrating this tech in Europe," Dinan said.
The company is hoping to launch one of their rockets very soon to launch people to space, like what was Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin are doing.
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