It may be a challenge to imagine corncobs powering rockets and it may be even more difficult to believe: This happened already in the 1940s!

Corncobs ^[1] used to be the feedstock of preference to make furfural ^[2] in the USA and France. Furfural is the platform chemical from which furfuryl alcohol (FA) is made. Furaline, a mixture of FA (41%), methanol (18%), and xylidine (dimethyl aniline; 41%) is a rocket fuel. The system is "hypergolic": When the furaline comes into contact with the nitric acid, it ignites by itself without external aid ^[1] . In the early 1940s, the