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This is obviously only relevant to very early in the OA timeline, but:
I seem to remember that, some years ago, there was much talk and some design work on spacecraft using aerospike rocket engines; apparently, there were some advantages in mass budget and efficiency. What happened? None of the recent designs seem to use them.
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They've been researched off and on for about half a century--same with scramjets, jetpacks, flying cars, post-Hindenburg advanced airships, and probably quite a few other things.
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Evidence separates truth from fiction.
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Every time they get built, they never get launched. NASA looked into them this century - as in the 2000s+ for one of their projects. ARCAspace says they've built one, had a series of videos leading up to the test/launch and then...took a break for a month, returned, and didn't act like anything happened, going back to their conventional nozzle rocket for a spell.
Maybe they're cursed by the ghost of Proxmire. They also seem complex; basically ten or so smaller thrusters in a parallel array - maybe the TurboPump problems come back in a sort of spectre? In any case, I hope they actually fly one day.
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Bumping this from a day ago.
