Fullerene-encapsulated Cyclic Ozone for the Next Generation of Nano-sized Propellants via Quantum Computation

Cyclic ozone additives have the potential to significantly increase the specific impulse of rocket fuel, which would lead to greater efficiency and reduced costs for space launches, allowing up to one third more payload per rocket. Although practical attempts to capture this isomer have not been successful, cyclic ozone might be stabilized within confined geometries. However, the required synthetic methods are challenging to design and need theory-driven inputs that exceed the capabilities of classical methods. Quantum computation could enable these calculations, but the hardware requirements for many practical applications are still unclear. We provide a comprehensive analysis of how quantum methods could aid efforts to isolate cyclic ozone using fullerene encapsulation. Our discussion goes beyond formal complexity analysis, offering both logical and physical overhead estimates for determining ground state energies based on quantum phase estimation (QPE). Together, these data outline a plausible scale for realistic, computationally-assisted molecular design efforts using fault-tolerant quantum computation.