Work / Fig 01 · 2021–2024
Vortex-based Virtual Aerospike
A rocket engine architecture that attacks the staging problem and aerospike cooling by forming a vortex-based virtual aerospike — an effectively 100% truncated spike made of gas.
A vortex virtual-aerospike engine hung nozzle-down in a small test stand, its near half cut away: a column of gas runs down the axis and out past the nozzle into a spike, while the reacted propellant winds round it as a vortex and follows the column down to the pad.
Single Stage To Orbit rocket engine
The constraint
Multi-stage rockets fail at the most expensive moment: staging. Traditional aerospikes promise altitude compensation but drown in cooling. Space stays expensive because the hardware is fighting atmosphere instead of using it.
In Mumbai in 2021, at 16, the first sketch was a hybrid aerospike–de Laval nozzle. A later search found Boeing had filed the same hybrid. The next iteration had to be strictly better — not a remix of a bell.
The architecture
The issued patent describes an adjustable engine for aerial vehicles. A combustion chamber with specialized inlets generates a vortex of propellants or gases. The vortex spins around a straight column of gases on the axis (propellant, a stored inert gas, or air drawn in from outside), and past the nozzle that column tapers into a spiked wick: a virtual aerospike, with no solid spike to cool.
The result is an effectively 100% truncated aerospike made of gas. Altitude compensation without the cooling gridlock of a physical spike. Single-stage-to-orbit becomes an engineering argument instead of a staging lottery.
What this is — and is not
US Patent No. 12,173,671 B2 issued 24 December 2024 (filed 19 July 2022; inventor of record: Atharva Undire). International publication WO/2023/012559. Indian application 202121035262. IPC F02K, C23C, F02C. Expected term through 2041.
This is a patented architecture, developed with CFD. There is no public prototype, no announced test article, and no claimed flight heritage. The site will not pretend otherwise.
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Interactive figure · Virtual Aerospike Engine
Open on its own ↗The engine cut in half on a bench, built from the patent’s claims. Move the altitude, column and inlet controls; simulate a launch.
From the bench
5 images
