A gel that sits still until the engine calls: a calmer way to store rocket fuel

Liquid rocket fuel sloshes around its tank, which makes spacecraft harder to control — but gel fuels, the usual fix, can be stubborn to pump. Researchers Pranay Mudaliar and Jerin John at Concordia University in Montreal have made a kerosene gel from lecithin, a naturally derived substance, plus a small amount of calcium chloride, and described it in the journal Langmuir. At rest it behaves like a soft solid, staying put and resisting leaks; under the force of fuel injection it thins by about 100 times and flows. Samples stayed stable for more than a year in sealed containers with no separation. It is early work — no engine has flown on it yet — but it maps exactly what a well-behaved space fuel needs to do.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation