Template:POTD/2020-10-06
An aerospike engine is a type of rocket engine that maintains its aerodynamic efficiency across a wide range of altitudes. A rocket engine directs a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid in one direction, generating thrust in the opposite direction. An aerospike engine differs from a conventional one in that, instead of firing the gases out of a small hole in the middle of a bell-shaped nozzle extension, it fires them along the outside edge of a wedge-shaped protrusion, the "spike". This 2001 photograph shows a Rocketdyne XRS-2200 linear aerospike engine for the Lockheed Martin X-33 program being tested at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi.Photograph credit: NASA; retouched by Papa Lima Whiskey