Fueling the National Aero-Space Plane with slush hydrogen

The National Aerospace Plane is a horizontal take off and landing, single stage-to-orbit vehicle using hydrogen as the fuel. The first flights are planned for the mid 1990s. The high heating value, cooling capacity, and combustion properties make hydrogen the fuel of choice, but the low density results in a large vehicle. Both the fuel cooling capacity and density are increased with the use of slush hydrogen and result in significant reductions in size of the vehicle. A national program to advance this technology and to find engineering solutions to the many design issues is now underway.