ATLANTA — The future of space travel just got a boost thanks to one Georgia Tech undergraduate student. Dalton Luedke is a third-year aerospace engineering student at Tech, and also part of the NASA Pathways Internship Program.
This summer during his internship at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, he accomplished a feat that one day could be “out of this world.”
He designed a new rocket engine.
MARLEN, which stands for Maturation of Additive Really Little Engine — is the new, small version of Luedke’s new detonation engine design. “I thought the name was funny, because Marlen is a big fish,” Luedke chuckled.
This small prototype engine kickstarts the testing of a new way of space travel. Current space missions use big constant-pressure engines. Think of the classic cylindrical rocket boosters lifting off with the final countdown. But Luedke’s design utilizes a different…
