Virgin Hoping New Fuel Will Provide an Altitude Boost for SpaceShipTwo

摘要

Hoping to give customers a higher ride aboard its suborbital, six-passenger spaceship, Virgin Galactic will switch to an alternative plastic fuel rather than the original rubber propellant used by the prototype SpaceShipOne a decade ago and in SpaceShipTwo's powered test flights. The company, an offshoot of Sir Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group, expects to make the change from hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene rubber-based fuel grains to a type of thermoplastic called polyamide that was developed by Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites, designer and manufacturer of SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo.