“people have been trying to make boron-based rocket fuels for a long time.”
To non-technical people like me, it’s not intuitively obvious what the advantage of such fuels is over conventional fuels. Cheaper? Lighter? Less explosive? Given your allusion to “hellacious explosives” it would appear the latter is not true. The point being, this article doesn’t really give a clue about what practical implications this development has for the average American.
Braunschweig’s team is already investigating the reactivity of the new compound, as well as its potential uses in organic electronic materials. Boron-containing compounds are already used in commercial production of organic light-emitting diodes, for example. “I think it might be a useful building block,” says Braunschweig. “The future will tell us whether this is a good approach.”