A jet engine with no moving parts. Sounds like something out of Dune. But a Baltimore start-up successfully flight-tested a scaled version to prove that the concept worked.

Wave Engine Corp. released this video on YouTube showing its demonstrator picking up speed, taking off, doing several mid-air starts and successfully landing. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had an assemblage on top that resembled a curved exhaust pipe on a muscle car. That was actually the wave engine, a contemporary variation of the pulsejet engine, which was first used on German V-1 guided missiles in WWII.

The company said wave engines operate by using pressure waves instead of rotating parts like a conventional turbine jet engines. "Intermittent combustion inside a hollow tube produces pressure waves that push hot gases and produce thrust," Wave Engine Corp. said in a statement. It added that the cost and complexity of jet propulsion are significantly less with this technology.

While pulsejet designs have been around for a century, the technology has been largely dismissed by the commercial aviation industry for being too loud and difficult to regulate during flight. They are used in model aircraft, drones and industrial applications. Pulsejet designs have been tried on experimental helicopters, and there is the belief, as Wave Engine Corp. shares, that the pulse detonation engine (PDE) promises higher efficiency than turbofan jet engines.

Boeing has a proprietary pulsejet engine technology called Pulse Ejector Thrust Augmentor (PETA), while aircraft engine makers Pratt & Whitney and General Electric have PDE research programs that use pulsejet engines for testing concepts early in the design phase. Boeing may use it on its Light Aerial Multi-Purpose Vehicle (LAMV) for future combat scenarios.