Los Alamos National Laboratory has a radical new solid propellent for cubesats. Unlike a traditional composite propellant, which mechanically mixes a fuel and an oxidizer into a high explosive, the ...

Today's high-performance composite propellants are the product of high-tech polymer chemistry -- and, even so, extensive quality control is needed to obtain reproducible, non-explosive performance.

Composite propellants, typically comprising an oxidiser, a fuel, and a polymeric binder, require sophisticated numerical simulations to capture the interplay between condensed and gas phases, ...

By the evening of the anomaly, Ship 36 had already completed two cryogenic proof tests and a single-engine static fire. The ...

The Shuttle SRB propellant was about 70% AP, 16% aluminum, a trace of red iron oxide, 12% PBAN (polybutadiene acrylic acid acrylonitrile), and 2% epoxy curing agent (I think that was Dow’s ...

A SpaceX Starship upper stage exploded during ramp-up to an expected engine test firing at the company's Starbase facility on ...

The composite propellant offers weapons-makers incredible advantages. As a drop-in replacement for liquid fuels, the new U.S.-sourced material is not only more powerful, but easier to handle.

Composite Propellant Perk Rockets embed themselves in struck targets and periodically eject incendiary fuel that inflicts Scorch. The longer this weapon goes without firing, the more fuel the next ...

And MLV's structures will be made of carbon composite materials, just like Alpha. But MLV will be more than twice the diameter of Alpha, requiring new tooling on Firefly's production floor.

As described in the SAMPE Europe 2020 paper, “Development of a lean production process for a thermoplastic composite upper stage propellant tank,” the laminate design for the tank was evaluated by ...