On topic of efficient rocket fuels, here's something on the chemical end: Manganese dyBoride.
MnB2 is a halide salt which is a solid at the usual inner-system temperatures, like pure aluminum. It also seems about as safe as a table salt... until you add kerosene, or maybe methane if we're adventurous. It's not so much the weight that excites them although that's good too (20% more energetic than aluminum); it's the volume (150%!).
They conjectured that this salt should exist in the 1960s but couldn't actually make any back then. Now they have Arc Melting.
The scale of production cannot be high. I think they want it for low-earth satellites. Unlike metastable nitrogen we should be able to ship this stuff up there without it blowing up en-route.
BACKDATE 10/6
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