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It is a pet peeve of mine that people call all spike engines "aerospikes." An aerospike engine has a truncated physical spike that is replaced with expanding gasses. In other words, it has an aerodynamic spike, or aerospike. Spike engines that taper to a line (for linear engines) or a point (for cylindrical engines), are just "spike engines."

I know I've lost this one among popular and lay audiences. It's just way too cool to say 'aerospike.'

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Pet peeve of mine is that you could have a missile propelled by an aerospike that also uses an aerospike to decrease drag.

I was under the impression that the linear spike engines also used the mechanism of the air pressure keeping the gases in the right shape?

The issue is that an aerospike engine is a spike engine that has been truncated, with the truncated portion replaced with an aerodynamic "spike," which also eliminates base drag.

Is it even practically possible to have a non-truncated spike engine? If you don't truncate the spike, won't it get so thin that it'd just burn/melt off? It seems like all spike engines are truncated to at least a minimal degree.

Or is the matter whether or not the truncation has aerodynamic effects? (Do any truncations not?)

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