New Rocket Fuel: A Pinch of Salt

samjam writes "'Rodney Bartlett devised a new form of solid nitrogen salt' says Ananova reporting on an article in Nature. 'Scientists at the University of Florida say it should be possible to make nitrogen with atoms linked in groups of five.' 'If their calculations are correct, the new form will have twice as much energy as the same volume of hydrazine which is the compound propelling many spacecraft today.' This new fuel could be a boon for home-brew rocket builders?" Note that by "salt", they don't mean table salt, just a compound of ions. Nitrogen compounds are important in explosives because the formation of nitrogen gas (which is very stable) can give off a lot of energy - so whatever you can do to create new and crazy nitrogen structures can potentially increase the energy density of your explosives.

Comments

Time travel

[dingo]

This article is a bit like time travel conjecture
The media has just latched onto some scientists who (probably very guardedly) admitted that if we could get N5- (subscript 5, - at top) then maybee we could make better rocket fuel. Big if. like maybee if we could travel faster than light blah blah blah. Guys were probably gotten drunk by a journo who needed a "revolutionary exclusive".