How candle wax could disrupt the space industry

Candles can set a mood, improve the scent of a teenage boy’s room, and, apparently, help rockets get to space. This month, a German startup called HyImpulse Technologies successfully completed a test-launch of a rocket powered by liquid oxygen and…candle wax.

The idea: Most companies in the space industry use a combination of liquid oxygen and kerosene to power their rockets. HyImpulse’s fuel mixture replaces kerosene with solid paraffin – a wax with a high melting point, primarily used in candles and various industrial applications.

And, while this “space candle wax” won’t make the atmosphere smell like a lavender-infused Mediterranean breeze, it does have a couple cost-cutting benefits:

1. It’s cheaper than kerosene. Using solid paraffin, which costs less than $4/kg, could reduce satellite transportation costs as much as 50%, per HyImpulse.
2. It’s nontoxic and easier to handle. HyImpulse was able to transport a rocket – complete with the paraffin fuel – as ordinary cargo on a container ship from Germany to Singapore to Australia, bypassing the need for expensive restrictions to prevent explosions.

Like JoJo Siwa, HyImpulse wasn’t the first with this idea. Researchers at Stanford over a decade ago found paraffin to be twice as strong as conventional solid propellants, and MIT’s Media Lab is currently performing experiments to test the material’s feasibility in future space operations.

Other space propulsion methods could also be on the horizon. NASA is currently working on a rocket powered by nuclear fission, which the agency says could reduce astronauts’ travel time to Mars by seven months (from nine → two).