From a balcony in Japan to a flying detonation engine: Venus Aerospace's race for the one-hour world
Key points
Key takeaways from Massive Signals podcast interview with Venus Aerospace co-founder and CEO Sassie Duggleby, recorded in 2026:
Origin story. The company stems from a 2018 family posting in Japan, when co-founder Andrew Duggleby, then head of propulsion R&D at Virgin Orbit, floated the idea that a proven detonation rocket engine could get the family home in about an hour. A jet-lagged Sunday ahead of her grandmother's birthday set the mission: high-speed global travel.
Hard-won start. Venus needed 180 investor conversations before closing its first cheque, a $3 million seed round, and learned early that a proper pitch deck, and patient deep-tech investors matter as much as the tech itself.
How the engine works. A rotating detonation rocket engine drives a supersonic detonation wave round an annular chamber roughly 10,000 times a second, releasing more energy per unit of propellant than conventional deflagration combustion.
Efficiency upside. The physics offers up to about 30 percent efficiency gains over classic rocket engines;,Venus reports demonstrating around 15 percent better combustion efficiency to date, against roughly 2 percent efficiency improvement SpaceX has achieved over Apollo-era hardware in five decades.
Iteration machine. The firm follows "build a little, test a little, learn a lot": it has logged around 650 engine tests with design, manufacturing and test all co-located at Houston Spaceport,,the only urban spaceport in the US.
Flight-proven. In May 2025 Venus carried out the first high-thrust flight of an RDRE at Spaceport America. That demo flipped the business: would-be buyers approached Venus, capital raising became easier,,and the strategy pivoted from fully integrated vehicles to selling engines to others.
Long-range goal. The one-hour global flight vision, "fly across the world and still be home for dinner", remains the north star,,funded step by step by near-term propulsion revenue,,a prize that spans defense,,space and commercial aviation.
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