
Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (1972) [pdf] - asciimike
http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20729115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20729115)
was 9 months ago. Reposts are fine after a year or so:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

It's best to check HN search, for example like this:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20Ignition%20informal&sort=byDate&type=story)

See also:

2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155394)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778)

------
sonofgod
On chlorine trifluoride:

”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is
hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition
delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth,
wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which
it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural
metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film
of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the
invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the
atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no
chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a
metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always
recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

(via
[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sa...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time))

~~~
erik_seaberg
I've read every _Things I Won 't Work With_ and I wish Lowe would write more;
he's the Dave Barry of chemistry.

~~~
jowiar
I spent years following Lowe for the Things he Won't Work With, but somewhere
a few weeks ago I was made aware of his coverage of COVID drug development,
which has been phenomenal (and is what he actually does work with).

------
tectonic
This book is way more entertaining than one would expect of a book from 1972
about rocket propellants. It's now back in print, probably because Musk called
it "fun".

In addition to the infamous section about chlorine trifluoride and running
shoes, I learned a lot about hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer and
monopropellant, as well as enjoyed a section on nuclear rockets.

If you're into this sort of nerdery, you might enjoy The Orbital Index, my
weekly newsletter about the space industry.
[https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)

~~~
tectonic
Scott Manley has a good video about hypergolic fuels too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFLmqQ5ceS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFLmqQ5ceS8)

------
jabl
This is a classic. Although it's a subject with absolutely no relevance to the
vast majority of readers, it's written in a funny dry style (for a good
example, see e.g. the quote posted in another comment).

It's also interesting to reflect on rocket fuels since the publication of the
book.

\- Military rockets have mostly shifted from hypergolics to solid fuels.

\- Orbital rockets mostly use LOX + suitable fuel. For the fuel, seems to be
good arguments for and against everything from hydrogen to heavier
hydrocarbons like kerosene.

\- Exotics (flourine, boron, etc.) have disappeared.

\- For hypergolics, the remaining use is mostly RCS's, deep space stuff, but
not "main" propulsion. And the oxidizer is mostly NTO rather than acid that
seemed to be Clark's favorite.

~~~
jkachmar
Regarding hypergols, I love the fact that you are absolutely correct that
they’re mostly relegated to places where you _need_ autoignition these days,
but then you look at the Proton rocket family...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(rocket_family)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_\(rocket_family\))

~~~
jabl
I should have made it clearer that I was writing about trends, not absolutes.

So yes, hypergolic powered rockets are still around, but mostly they are old
designs on the way out. The Proton family you mention was on the drawing board
before the book was published, and is to be replaced by the kerolox powered
Angara family.

Similarly, the Chinese hypergolic Long March 2/3 families are old designs in
the process of being replaced by the kerolox powered Long March 5/6/7
families.

~~~
jkachmar
Ha, TIL!

I’m not too familiar with the Long March family but that does make sense.

More random engine nerdery:

\- It’s really exciting to see all of the development going into full-flow
combustion metholox engines these days; BE-4 and Raptor have been incredible
projects to follow.

\- The Rocketdyne F-1 is still the most impressive rocket engine to me,
although the RS-25 is a very close second. Watching videos of the Apollo
launches and seeing those things in action is absolutely awe-inspiring.

~~~
jabl
Yes, the staged combustion methalox engines under development are interesting.

Though there's value in keeping it simple too. Gas generator engines got us to
the moon and back.

And if the goal is routine travel to Mars, I think we really need nuclear
propulsion.

And yeah, F1 is really impressive. Heck, the entire Apollo program was an
astounding achievement in so many ways.

Though the geek in me is disappointed that kerolox engines produce so much
soot that you can't see the Mach diamonds..

------
hprotagonist
If you like this (and you should), I also recommend:

Gergel, M. G. (1979). Excuse me sir, would you like to buy a kilo of isopropyl
bromide? Retrieved from
[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopr...](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopropyl_bromide.pdf)

 _We had never had such a dreadful assignment. Anyone working with this
“superstink” is branded and given a wide berth. No matter how amorous his
spouse may be, passion crumples despite baths, Chlorox and Dentine. For a
while we made isovaleroyl chloride at Cedar Terrace. It created pandemonium
among residents who first sniffed each other, came to the plant to sniff us,
and then sniffled to their lawyers._

~~~
Nextgrid
Also see Selenophenol:

> The biggest stinker I have run across... Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber
> innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the
> metaphysical stench of this material.

> I believe that this lovely compound is commercially available (if you’re
> anywhere close to anyone making it, you’ll know about it)

From
[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/05/15/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/05/15/things_i_wont_work_with_selenophenol)

------
cclark00
The most jaw dropping but easily missed story I remember from that book:

"That was the case once, when we were all seated around the table in the
middle of the lab, having lunch. I glanced up, and noticed that the contents
of one flask was turning a little brown. "Who owns that one?" [...they hit the
deck as it exploded]

Who eats lunch in a chemistry lab?

~~~
projektfu
That's how etorphine was discovered! Well, having tea and stirring it with a
"clean" glass rod.

------
steffan
If you liked Ignition you may also like Eric Schlosser's _Command and
Control_. I thought it was well written and enjoyed his style of weaving the
story throughout the book.

------
hoorayimhelping
For context, this book was out of print for a long time and the only way to
get it was via PDF. The recent re-interest in rockets has led to it being re-
published.

[https://smile.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-
Unive...](https://smile.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-
Classics/dp/0813595835/)

~~~
exmadscientist
I found the reprint _extremely_ difficult to read due to poor layout
decisions. In particular, the font they used for subscripts (the 3 in ClF₃) is
tiny and illegible. And there are rather a lot of those in a chemistry
book....

I don't think anyone proofed it.

------
sonofgod
An absolute classic: people may not be aware it got reprinted, and is
therefore available in dead-tree (and ebook) format again.

~~~
Anneliese777
There is also an audio-book. I enjoyed the narrator's take on it, his
occasional dead-pan reading of something ridiculous reduced me to giggles.

[https://www.audible.com/pd/Ignition-
Audiobook/B07CTTXLL6](https://www.audible.com/pd/Ignition-
Audiobook/B07CTTXLL6)

------
lighttower
I read the book cover to cover after finding references to it by Derek Lowe on
his pipeline blog [1]. Learned a lot about chemistry and the enormous
investment that went into the space age (mostly because of overlapping
technology for ICBMs and other rocket powered weapons) which is daunting as
this book ONLY covers what's been declassified as of the 80s in propelants.

[1] blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/

------
xxpor
If you enjoy this stuff, NileRed did a video a year and a half ago on
hypergolic chemicals and experimented with making nozzles out of test tubes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OszX18NLtrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OszX18NLtrY)

------
Ididntdothis
It seems this book is best if you read some small excerpts. I tried to read
the whole book but I found the author to be a little too full of himself to
make the book enjoyable.

~~~
masklinn
I guess that's an YMMV thing, I had no issue reading Ignition! and very much
enjoyed the trip.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
Same here. The day I discovered it in the engineering library, I sat down in
the stack and read it cover to cover. Very difficult to put down.

------
sciencemadness
It's always a pleasure to see Sciencemadness linked here. The link is usually
to this book, and with good reason. It's a classic. You don't have to be a
chemist to enjoy it (though that helps). I have a main account here but I
never comment on Sciencemadness submissions through it because the site so
easily reveals my real-life identity.

I first discovered _Ignition!_ on the shelves of the Medford, Oregon public
library when I was 10 years old. I was hooked on my first reading and would go
on to read it several more times before I entered my teens. It was tied with
Tenney L. Davis's _The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives_ as my favorite non-
fiction book.

I started the Sciencemadness library [1] a long time ago, before the big book-
scanning initiatives like Google Books started. The library still contains a
large number of books that are unremarkable except for the fact that they were
among the first digitized books covering certain facets of chemistry to be
made available online.

The library _does_ contain a couple of books less famous than _Ignition!_ but
also potentially interesting to non-chemist readers:

 _Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?_

This is an anecdotal, autobiographical sketch of Max Gergel and his adventures
as a young (then older) mad scientist building the business Columbia Organic
Chemicals.

Columbia Organic Chemicals and its founder, Max Gergel, had the unusual honor
of mention and praise by name in Kary Mullis's Nobel lecture [2]:

"I never tired of tinkering in labs. During the summer breaks from Georgia
Tech, Al Montgomery and I built an organic synthesis lab in an old chicken
house on the edge of town where we made research chemicals to sell. Most of
them were noxious or either explosive. No one else wanted to make them,
somebody wanted them, and so their production became our domain. We suffered
no boredom and no boss. We made enough money to buy new equipment. Max Gergel,
who ran Columbia Organic Chemicals Company, and who was an unusually nice man,
encouraged us and bought most of our products, which he resold. There were no
government regulators to stifle our fledgling efforts, and it was a golden
age, but we didn't notice it. We learned a lot of organic chemistry."

The chicken coop lab full of noxious chemicals isn't far removed from how Max
Gergel got his start in the chemistry business either.

In this humorous, anecdotal chronicle of Max's life from high school mad
scientist to successful operator of a chemical supply business, you'll learn
where metallic potassium should NOT be stored, how to prepare perfectly
alcohol-free n-dodecyl bromide, and why one man would be crazy enough to want
a preparative scale procedure for methyl isocyanide. You'll also learn,
humorously but quite clearly, how the golden age of "no government regulators"
contained the seeds of its own destruction, as horrendous odors, accidental
poisonings, dumpings, fires, and miscellaneous accidents and occupational
hazards take their toll on Gergel and his employees, neighbors, and
surrounding environs.

[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopr...](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopropyl_bromide.pdf)

 _The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in
Peace_

Famed Harvard chemistry professor Louis Fieser's personal history of
development of incendiary weapons during WW II, including the infamous Bat
Bomb, plus development of cortisone, antimalarial drugs, and educational
material for students.

Louis Fieser joined the American war effort before America had even officially
entered World War II, as one of 20 professor invited to the house of Roger
Adams in October 1940 to join the National Defense Research Committee. He was
instructed early on to work on chemical vesicants but, considering them
inhumane, quickly made a lateral move to begin development of gelled gasoline
incendiary weapons. He led the research effort behind napalm, several other
components of large-scale incendiary ordnance, and smaller special purpose
incendiary devices for use by spies and saboteurs.

Fieser's strangest project was development of the Bat Bomb: a cluster-bomb
arrangement of hibernating bats carrying time-delayed incendiaries. As the
bats fell from bombers over enemy cities, they would rouse from hibernation
mid-air and seek shelter in attics of the city below. Their incendiaries would
then start concealed, hard-to-fight fires. The project was surprisingly
successful for one never deployed, and included the own-goal immolation of an
administrative building during testing.

When Fieser was not working on setting fires he also had time to begin work on
the first edition of his organic chemistry textbook, research cortisone
chemistry, and work on antimalarial drugs. The information given late in the
book about getting cats to pose for photographs with chemical apparatus is
invaluable because it comes from real experience.

[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_scientif...](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_scientific_method.pdf)

[1]
[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/)

[2]

~~~
VLM
Thanks for your efforts. I often wonder how many teen boys get recruited into
declaring a chemistry or chemical engineering major due to those classic
books. I know it worked on me and several other people.

Chemistry is pretty cool. A little harder to do at home as an amateur than
something like computer science; maybe that challenge makes it more rewarding?

~~~
sciencemadness
When I was a kid in the 1980s it didn't seem harder than my other hobby,
programming a Commodore 64. The _relative_ difficulty is probably higher now,
and of course your friends/neighbors/postal carrier may be more paranoid that
anyone with chemistry equipment is a "drug cook."

My hands-on work with chemistry started by growing crystals when I was in the
second grade. By third grade I was making very simple fireworks. I remember
showing some of them off to classmates at my birthday party when I turned 9.
By the time I was 10 I had taken over half of the family garage for my home
lab.

I double majored in chemistry and computer science in college. I went on to
graduate school afterward, working with computational chemistry and HPC.
That's where I faced up to the reality of the job market. I didn't want to be
an overworked, underpaid postdoc. Competition for academic tenure is brutal.
The job prospects for non-academic chemists did not look promising. Since I
had already been writing software for 15 years at that point, it was easy to
transition to software as a career when I was done with school. I still love
chemistry and would work in it or an allied field if it offered pay/perks
comparable to software development.

Even software-in-the-field-of-chemistry underpays: when I started applying for
software jobs Schrödinger made me an offer, but the pay was a third less than
an entry level backend developer position for a West Coast startup. And they
wanted me to relocate to New York City at my own expense.

Even though I am glum about the employment prospects for chemists in the USA,
I still love chemistry and encourage any interest I find. If you are looking
to encourage a child -- or even take it up as a hobby yourself -- a good place
to start is Robert Bruce Thompson's _Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry
Experiments_ :

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514921.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514921.do)

For more advanced hobbyists there are still a few forums around like that on
Sciencemadness. (I think that Sciencemadness is probably the best one in
English, but I am biased.)

Forum:
[https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/](https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/)

You'll need to send an email requesting an account if you want to sign up.
Trying to keep up with playing whack-a-mole against automated link-spam bots
was too exhausting.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Awesome book! I have this (in digital form). Derek Lowe mentions it in one of
my favorite _In the Pipeline_ articles:
[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sa...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)

------
ravedave5
Such a great book.

