Mjölnir is a full-flow staged combustion engine that offers higher efficiencies than other designs. It is the same architecture used by SpaceX’s Raptor engine as well as by Stoke Space, a startup developing a reusable launch vehicle. The engine uses liquid oxygen and methane propellants.
New Frontier plans to use the engine on a vehicle called the Intercontinental Rocketliner, a suborbital vehicle intended to carry 100 people on high-speed flights around the planet at hypersonic speeds. The vehicle, whose shape is superficially similar to past concepts like the X-33 and VentureStar, would take off and land vertically but use a “boost-cruise-glide” approach to travel through the upper atmosphere.
Sounds exciting. Still in the early stages though.
