Question: What materials are you investigating as propulsion fuels?

Alison Dufresne answered on 5 Nov 2018: last edited 5 Nov 2018 7:39 pm

Well we currently sell a water based propulsion system. It’s simple and cheap and gets the job done but I play/work with some of the more dangerous fuels for our bigger engines. For those engines we tested the prototype with methane-oxygen and have since moved onto a propane/butane mix with a “secret sauce” oxidiser (I’m not allowed to say what unfortunately).
Methane is known as the most efficient fuel but it doesn’t always have the other qualities you want, like storage density. At University I worked with a hybrid system with a solid fuel (polyethylene-peroxide), which are even denser than propane but those were a “one use only”. At my first job we designed a kerosene-peroxide engine that had the best of both worlds but unfortunately I didn’t stick around long enough to see one of those test fire.