XCOR @ NASA

A few months ago, the news that XCOR Aerospace had tested a LOX/Methane engine hit the rocket journals, like the aRocket email list and SpaceDaily.com. Today, Science@NASA got around to covering the event. LOX/Methane research is cool for at least three reasons: (1) It's far denser, much easier to handle, and far warmer in it's liquid state than liquid hydrogen, (2) Robert Zubrin has pointed out that martian methane production is a good propellant option for missions from Mars, and is a relatively plentiful gas in much of the rest of the solar system, (3) The US has abundant stores of methane in the form of Natural Gas.

Congratulations to XCOR, a small private rocket development company, for getting coverage on the NASA news pipeline.