Build a new kind of rocket engine, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or at least that’s how it’s worked out for Venus Aerospace and its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), an ultra-efficient way to hurl stuff into the sky. The company was founded in 2020 by husband-and-wife duo, CEO Sassie Duggleby and CTO Andrew Duggleby, with the idea of developing clean-flying hypersonic jets for passenger travel. But after successfully demonstrating the engine last year, their plans changed. “What happened when we flew last May is the world looked at us and said, ‘oh my gosh, you have a working RDRE, would you sell us one?’ And that wasn’t what we were expecting,” Sassie Duggleby told TechCrunch. Now, the company is focused on hypersonic weapons development, replacing the solid rocket motors that power many missiles with its own thruster, and high-speed space vehicles that appeal to the military. “Our propulsion architecture combines efficiency, throttling, reusability and manufacturability in a way thatcustomers need for real defense and space missions,” Andrew Duggleby said …