A Fenris Engine is the first air-breathing rocket-engine that was originally created by Aaron Davis, and is a property of Mountain Aerospace Research Solutions.
The Fenris engine was developed in order to reduce the price of space travel and the cost of leaving Earth. The cost to launch a payload into space has averaged $18,500 USD per kilogram between 1970 and 2000, and payloads on NASA space shuttles cost an average of $54,500 per kilogram. Due to innovations in engines, a payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 costs roughly $2,790 per kilogram.
A Fenris engine works around the problems of a chemical engine. It uses the atmosphere for propellant and reaction mass. The engine and its increased performance to orbit will enable a redesign in current launch vehicles. The engine is designed to be able to allow a vehicle to get high enough in the atmosphere, to the point of low oxygen so that a rocket can then ignite and take the vehicle into orbit.
The Fenris engine has been tested through a hotfire test where the lines around the cone feed kerosene and gaseous oxygen into a combustion chamber where it is mixed with the air and is ignited.
