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Eventually, rocketmen are sure that they will solve the problems with both types. Olin Mathieson and Gallery Chemical Co. are both building multimillion-dollar plants to produce secret exotic new liquid fuels, based on boron (TIME, April 1), with twice the power of present fuels. Other companies are betting on plastic-like nitro-polymers as solid propellants, hope to reduce rocket-engine complexity by 50% while doubling reliability.
Around the Moon? To date, the industry's biggest customer is the U.S. Government. No one knows how much of a peacetime market there will be for the new industry. Some rocketeers see a multitude of uses for rockets in oil drilling, as braking power for railroad trains and auxiliary starters for heavy industrial machines. And some time within the next two decades, rocketmen predict, the U.S. will see supersonic rocket airliners carrying passengers across the U.S. in less than 70 minutes.
Many planemakers already have plans for experimental rocket transports on their drawing boards. Some are even aiming at the solar system. Says George P. Sutton, head of Rocketdyne's preliminary design section: "The rocket engines we have today appear to make flights around and to the moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars theoretically feasible. And the multiple-stage devices being conceived make it theoretically possible to fly missions to Jupiter and Saturn."