Zip fuel, also known as high energy fuel (HEF), is any member of a family of jet fuels containing additives in the form of hydro-boron compounds, or boranes. Zip fuels offered higher power density than conventional fuels, helping extend the range of jet aircraft, a major problem for the military planners in the 1950s. A number of aircraft were designed to make use of zip, including the XB-70 Valkyrie, XF-108 Rapier, as well as the BOMARC, and even the nuclear powered aircraft program. In testing, the fuels proved to have several serious problems and the entire effort was eventually canceled in 1959. It was later claimed that the Blackstar spaceplane uses zip fuel, but Blackstar is almost certainly mythical.
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Famous quotes containing the word fuel:
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)