Adding an Aircraft Fuel Is Also an Airport Problem

NASA's “Fueling Flight Design Challenge: New Energy Systems” is open to middle and high school students, and teams in both categories work on the same thing: the addition of one emerging aircraft fuel, liquefied natural gas, into the aviation environment. It is a design brief that begins where most fuel arguments end — at the fuel itself — and then keeps going. The challenge reaches all the way to the ground: what would need to change in aircraft, and what would need to change at the airports where they take off and land.