Hellacious Hemi

The Hellacious Hemi is another rocket from Advanced Exploration Technology Group, a firm that normally builds cargo ships. After they submitted the design for the Big Chief rocket - based on the engines that normally power the largest of the bulk cargo ships – they realized that there were more optimizations they could do to wring even more performance from the engines.

The Big Chief was designed as a super-stable, almost maintenance-free design. To achieve low maintenance demands, the engine was overbuilt and never pushed to its limits. What if the engineers went back to the drawing boards and shaved tolerances, increased injection pressure, and super-charged everything? If it worked, the energy output would be almost 50% higher than a stock Big Chief.

It looked possible on paper - but would it work in real life? There was only one way to know: build it. The first Hellacious Hemi prototype was a bit too much. Tolerances shaved too close; pressures too high, super-charging too extreme. The prototype lasted 15 minutes on the test stand before it blew up (but, oh! the power output during those 15 minutes). The engineers built a second prototype, this time dialing things back just a bit. Still super-charged, but not quite so much. Tolerances tightened, but not too tight. This turned out to be the sweet spot: the Hellacious Hemi delivers far more power than the stock Big Chief…but the fact that every unit needs to be hand tweaked by expert engineers and technicians means that this will always be a unique rocket.