Composite Cryogenic Fuel Tanks: Yielding lower costs and weight reductions
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has started a series of structural and pressure tests on one of the largest composite cryogenic fuel tanks ever manufactured. The composite rocket fuel tank built by the Boeing Company near Seattle arrived at Marshall on March 26 on NASA’s Super Guppy airplane. The tank has just completed its first round of testing. NASA is pursuing composite cryogenic fuel tanks, a potentially game changing technology, because the tanks could yield significant cost and weight reductions on future launch vehicles.