Word: boron
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...floor. In the past year huge machines had scraped off 7,000,000 tons of earth to expose this mineral prize: the world's largest known deposit of borax. To the housewife, borax is merely a household cleanser, 'but to industry it is the chief source of boron, a new wonder element and Jack-of-all-trades that can be used in everything from drugs and plastics to the super-powered rocket fuels of the future...
EXOTIC-FUEL DEAL will put Gulf Oil Corp. into new field of high-energy jet and missile fuels. Gulf is buying 25% of Gallery Chemical Co., developers of promising "HiCal" boron fuel (TIME, March 18), will start joint research and production program...
Cloud of Poison. But boron hydrides are bad actors. Besides being poisonous, they have a reputation for exploding spontaneously for no apparent reason. This disadvantage may have been overcome, but it is more likely that the best boron-containing fuels are compounds of boron with carbon, hydrogen and perhaps other elements. There is a long list of such compounds to choose from. A boron-carbon-hydrogen compound would not be quite so powerful as a straight boron hydride, but it might be a pleasanter playmate...
...Boron fuels, with their higher energy and higher temperature of combustion, will come close to doubling the range of airplanes. In long-range missiles, they may make the difference between success and failure. They will be expensive (at least $1 per lb.) and probably highly toxic. They will burn with a bright green flame, and their exhaust, a white cloud of solid boron compounds, will be so poisonous to vegetation that tests will have to be run in deserts...
...Boron compounds do not end the list of possible exotic fuels. Paintlike slurries of powdered aluminum or magnesium, suspended in some combustible liquid, contain a lot of energy. In the case of rocket motors, which do not depend on atmospheric oxygen, both the fuel and the oxidizer material with which the fuel combines can be varied. Nitric acid is popular because it is a convenient form of oxygen and yields additional energy when it decomposes. Liquid fluorine is theoretically the best oxidizer, but it is fantastically corrosive and hard to handle. Some material may be discovered that yields fluorine conveniently...