Refueling rockets: could spacecraft powered by a new wax be safer and cheaper?

From: Science News | Date: March 22, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

On the campus of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., you periodically hear--and feel--a thunderous roar as engineers ignite experimental rocket engines that are chock full of the same paraffin wax that illuminates candlelight dinners. The idea of using wax as rocket fuel isn't new. People tried it years ago but couldn't get the wax to work well enough to launch a heavy rocket into space. The engineers now bracing against the roar of their wax-filled engines suspect, however, that their predecessors were indeed onto something. If that's true, paraffin wax could ...

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