Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (Rutgers University Press Classics)

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But most of us have no involvement with it at all besides an awareness that it exists, and that makes it easy to take for granted. is a history of liquid rocket propellants, but it's also a history of cold war and the space race, told from a particular point of view.

Happily, a result of that work was this book; it captures history and detail that otherwise would simply have disappeared. OK, to be fair if you don't have a science or engineering degree this might be heavy going, but if you do it reminds you of the first time you blew things up. If you are seeking a publisher to release your manuscript as it is and don’t want any editorial input, we are not the publisher for you! There is some insight into rocket science and humor but I found it buried underneath continual lists of various chemicals with little context.A classic work in the history of science, and described as “a good book on rocket stuff…that’s a really fun one” by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, readers will want to get their hands on this influential classic, available for the first time in decades.

You can watch the online launch of these pamphlets and previous launches at the bottom of this page or on our YouTube channel. But if they flow in, collect in a puddle, and then ignite, you have an explosion which generally demolishes the engine and its immediate surroundings.On the other hand, once you had a chemical you wanted, you could put it out for bid to the chemical industry quickly and easily.

Now because this is a history of rocket propellants, the book can get technical at times, but nothing that can impede a 21st century reader who knows how to use the Wikipedia. If you are a student in mechanical or aerospace engineering, you will find this book to be an excellent motivational source and companion to your textbook in your Combustion Processes and Aerospace Propulsion courses. You’ll find plenty about John and all the other sky-high crackpots who were in the field with him and you may even get (as I did) a glimpse of the heroic excitement that seemed to make it reasonable to cuddle with death every waking moment—to say nothing of learning a heck of a lot about the way in which the business of science is really conducted.Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.

Our indicative timeline includes acceptance in December, editing from December-March, publication in April, and a launch in April/May. It didn’t take long for the “outstandingly mad” engineers to realize that using this oxidizer was TOO insane, even for them. I don’t know about the rest of you but just the name Red Fuming Nitric Acid has about the same sense of safety as Angry Penis Eating Spider, I guess rocket chemists had to be a little crazy. Considering the difficulties involved in working with such a miserable substance, the achievement can fairly be classified as heroic.Most of us lack any understanding of the fact that its development was the result of a whole lot of hard scientific work, and that work required brilliance (and bravery) and had many frustrating dead ends. Everyone's interest should be piqued by the statement at the beginning that the chemists and engineers that designed the liquid rocket fuels up the the early 70's when this was originally written were "beyond insane". was remarkably liberal, with a wide cut (range of distillation temperatures) and with such permissive limits on olefins and aromatics that any refinery above the level of a Kentucky moonshiner's pot still could convert at least half of any crude to jet fuel.