Thrustworks Dynetics

This tiny piece of metal can ignite any rocket propellant without a spark. How? By bouncing shockwaves inside this device to generate enough heat for the ignition. It's called a resonance igniter. This Pune-based startup became the first in India to test this successfully. In fact, there are less than half a dozen entities in the world that can actually do this. But this is not even the most impressive thing about Thrustworks Dynetics. Manan, one of the founders of Thrustworks, tells me that this entire device was designed using machine learning algorithms. And this resonance igniter is just one of the subsystems they are developing. Their actual goal is to build ANYA - their customizable semi-cryogenic engine. If you wanted to build a rocket engine from scratch - it could take 4-5 years to design, manufacture and test it. But Thrustworks can compress this entire process down to just 6-8 months. They are building software that takes the requirements for a rocket engine, designs the hardware, analyses it, and even checks whether the design can actually be manufactured, inspected and tested with the tools available locally. They've already proved this with their resonance igniter. And if they are able to pull this off - it could change the way engines are manufactured in India.