Word: boron
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...step down from the dream fuels are the boron-containing fuels that have already grown big enough to stir up flurries on Wall Street (see BUSINESS). Boron itself gives much energy, and some of its compounds hold a lot of high-energy hydrogen in easy-to-handle form. Modern boron fuels are stable, reliable and have high (classified) specific impulses. One of them is now being manufactured in considerable quantity by Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. at Niagara Falls. Gallery Chemical Co., near Pittsburgh, is making its HiCal, a boron-carbon-hydrogen combination...
Solids to the Fore. To be used in liquid-fueled rockets, both fuel and oxydizer must be liquid and thin enough to be pumped rapidly. This rules out promising materials, e.g., boron itself and many of its compounds, that are not liquid at ordinary temperatures. One way around this difficulty is to grind them finely and mix them with a liquid carrier to form a paintlike slurry. The most radical way is to burn them as solids with a solid oxydizer. Through this technique, a long list of new high-energy materials can be used...
...range of the Hustler is secret, but is estimated to be in the order of 5,000 miles. New "exotic" fuels (TIME, April 1) containing high-energy Boron will also lengthen the range. But the Hustler's speed cannot be increased merely by reducing drag or adding to the thrust of its engines. It already flies so fast that the limiting factor on its speed is the amount of friction-generated heat that its metal skin and its three-man crew (pilot, navigator-bombardier and defensive-systems operator) can stand...
...President Gerstley foresees earnings for this year "about the same" as last year's $1.47 a share-a healthy 13.5% on its net sales. But he expects to step them up in the future, has set up a $1,000,000 research center to discover more uses for boron. To make sure that he can provide the borax, he planned the present expansion so that production can easily be stepped up another 25% to 50% for only $4,000,000 or $5,000,000, should the demand exceed even his sanguine expectations...
...Boron's principal value in high-energy fuels is its ability to bind hydrogen into a liquid or solid form, thus harness hydrogen's energy (52,000 B.T.U. per Ib. v. 18,500 for kerosene...