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

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The most recent ignitionpress launch of pamphlets by Clementine E Burnley, Laboni Islam, and Fahad Al-Amoudi is available to watch on this page and via our YouTube channel. So, both readers with and without a science background will appreciate the book's unique and engaging storytelling style. Some of it is a bit technical for me (I did not do Chemistry at school only Physics - and that was years ago).

Parts become a bit dry in the latter half, as the basic science converges more and more on a few optimal fuels.ignitionpress has a recognisable cover design which we will be retaining for the foreseeable future.

Considering the difficulties involved in working with such a miserable substance, the achievement can fairly be classified as heroic. And third (crescendo and fortissimo) you’ll have a couple of flunkies up here within fifteen minutes to clean up this (—bleep—) mess or I’ll be down there with a rusty hacksaw blade. In audiobook format, it should many of the complaints - poor scanning and the like - that going the print book. Having a publication appearing so soon after a pamphlet makes it very difficult to sell the pamphlet, particularly if many of the same poems appear in the both the pamphlet and the collection. No doubt it was a great time and place to be a chemist but as he says in the intro by the early 60s all possible combinations of propellants and oxidisers had been tried and nothing much has changed since then.There are myriad other considerations as well; the fuel must burn at a manageable temperature (so as not to destroy the motor), the energy density of the fuel must be high enough to be a practical fuel in the first place, and so on. A lot of the challenges were physical (how to stop the fuel freezing at above -56C this being a military requirement for example) or how to get the fuel to 'light' smoothly and political (programs start; money is awarded; companies pile in, fashions change and interests move on to another program that starts).

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. If that piques your interest even a little, even if you do nothing else today, read the first few pages of IGNITION! 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.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. A classic work in the history of science, listeners will want to get their hands on this influential classic, available for the first time in decades. The book uses a bit of inorganic chemistry to explain what happens, but nothing that someone that did chemistry to the British O level (taken at 16) 50 years ago cannot follow. I struggled to finish this book because the author is on a mission to exhaustively described what seems like every mixture of rocket propellant ever devised, when a summary such as "and then they tried numerous other hydroxide mixtures, none of whom worked".

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. The actual process of discovering exactly what materials to use and how precisely to make them work in a rocket motor was the very essence of the phrase “the devil is in the details. That humor helps the accessibility, and as long as you remember some high school chemistry you shouldn't have a problem with the science either. One of the major themes in the book is the development of hypergolic compounds -- those that ignite promptly on contact. These constraints often work against each other -- chemicals that react quickly often react badly with piping and human tissue.A classic work in the history of science, and described as â€œa 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. Our current editors are: Les Robinson, Claire Cox, and Niall Munro, and you can find out more about us on our Editors page. Three pamphlets: A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan, There's No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, and Kismet by Jennifer Lee Tsai have sold out. A comprehensive review of missile fuel technology by a former participant in developments up to and including Saturn V. You will get the full account of historical rocket science down to every relevant combustion equation.