{"product":{"product_id":"B076838QS2","title":"Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (Rutgers University Press Classics)","price":"14.99","image_url":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51AW1VzCAdL._SL500_.jpg","url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076838QS2"},"comments":[{"body":"[Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) is a fantastically written book on the more interesting days of rocket propellant development.  It contains quotes like\r\n\r\n\u0026gt; “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.”","subreddit_name":"suggestmeabook","author":"saumanahaii"},{"body":"In the iconic book [Ignition!](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) every test fire where the test stand doesn't blow up, is considered a success ;-)","subreddit_name":"spacex","author":"Toinneman"},{"body":"Oh god if you think *that's* Kerbal you need to read [*Ignition*](https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf) (It's also [on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) if you want a better-formatted edition.)\r\n\r\nEDIT: One of the more famous excerpts:\r\n\r\n\u0026gt; All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. 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, aluminum, 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 aluminum 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. And even if you don't have a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the matter, and it wasn't until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont that one of them would come across with the details.  \r\n\u0026gt;  \r\n\u0026gt; It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three-foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.","subreddit_name":"spacex","author":"asaz989"},{"body":"I'd suggest reading this for ideas:\r\n\r\nhttps://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2","subreddit_name":"rocketry","author":"FullFrontalNoodly"},{"body":"If you like this check out the book [ignition! by John D. Clark](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2)","subreddit_name":"videos","author":"illuminatisdeepdish"},{"body":"[Ignition!](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) is a wonderful and page-turning read about the early search for the best rocket propellants.","subreddit_name":"spaceflight","author":"the_quark"},{"body":"As noted above, Ignition has gotten enough interest in recent years that it is back in print.\r\n\r\nhttps://www.amazon.ca/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2","subreddit_name":"askscience","author":"Jorpho"},{"body":"\u0026gt; was not even something NASA realized could happen (after all, they reviewed SpaceX design)\r\n\r\nI don't want to seem too critical of NASA or SpaceX engineers -- it was a pretty obscure failure mode and its especially to SpaceX's credit that they caught it in testing. But they really ought to have recognized it as a risk.\r\n\r\nFirstly, check valves leak.\r\n\r\nSecondly, from page 61 of [Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants](https://www.amazon.com.au/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2):\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;There was a great deal of interest in titanium at that time, and as\r\nmany rocket engineers wanted to use it, the question of its resistance\r\nto RFNA couldn't be neglected. But these corrosion studies were\r\ninterrupted by a completely unexpected accident. On December 29,\r\n1953, a technician at Edwards Air Force Base was examining a set of\r\ntitanium samples immersed in RFNA, when, absolutely without warning, one or more of them detonated, smashing him up, spraying him\r\nwith acid and flying glass, and filling the room with NO2. The technician, probably fortunately for him, died of asphyxiation without\r\nregaining consciousness.\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;There was a terrific brouhaha, as might be expected, and JPL\r\nundertook to find out what had happened. J. B. Rittenhouse and his\r\nassociates tracked the facts down, and by 1956 they were fairly clear.\r\nInitial intergranular corrosion produced a fine black powder of\r\n(mainly) metallic titanium. And this, when wet with nitric acid, was\r\nas sensitive as nitroglycerine or mercury fulminate. (The driving\r\nreaction, of course, was the formation of TiO2.) Not all titanium alloys\r\nbehaved this way, but enough did to keep the metal in the doghouse\r\nfor years, as far as the propellant people were concerned.\r\n\r\nAny engineer aware of this incident should have vetoed any use of titanium where it could *potentially* come into contact with nitrogen tetroxide **unless** they had extensively studied the particular titanium alloy they were planning to use, and demonstrated beyond doubt that it would not form an explosive under any circumstance. And even that seems like more of a risk than it's worth to save a few grams. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.","subreddit_name":"SpaceXLounge","author":"cretan_bull"},{"body":"\u0026gt;Things I Won't Work With\r\n\r\nNo need to hoist the Jolly Roger to find a copy of *Ignition!*, Rutgers has been reprinting it for a few years now and it's available on Amazon (and, presumably, from other booksellers; I got it from Amazon last year):[https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2)","subreddit_name":"explainlikeimfive","author":"talon_262"},{"body":"Yes sorry. I do. [Ignition](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) is also a very good book.","subreddit_name":"SpaceXMasterrace","author":"Stage3Rp1Load"},{"body":"Thanks! If you're interested in more of the background/theory behind this there's a lot of research into it for rocket propulsion (also the source of my own knowledge). More or less every college rocketry team that gets to the liquid propellant stage uses nitrous oxide. Chapter 1 of Benjamin Waxman's excellent PhD thesis ([https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:ng346xh6244/BenjaminWaxmanFinal-augmented.pdf](https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:ng346xh6244/BenjaminWaxmanFinal-augmented.pdf)) has a pretty good overview of this and was my primary reference for some N2O-related modeling I was doing in school. You'll likely need wikipedia in another tab if you're not familiar with propulsion or basic thermodynamics.\r\n\r\n[Ignition!](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) also provides a very in-depth, relatively layman-friendly review of the many, many propellant combinations tried in the 50s/60s, and some of the hijinks that resulted (there's a very fine line between not lighting and blowing up the lab...). It's considered a classic by those into this sort of work.","subreddit_name":"EngineeringPorn","author":"ertlun"},{"body":"Ignition! is a classic. https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2","subreddit_name":"SpaceXLounge","author":"spacex_fanny"},{"body":"[Ignition, an informal history of rocket fuels](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2)","subreddit_name":"engineering","author":"Elrathias"},{"body":"[This](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2) is a fantastic book about the history of rocket fuels.","subreddit_name":"space","author":"ddfc-b62a-461d-b748"},{"body":"If this topic interests you, I highly recommend  John Clark's book [Ignition](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2).   Its an awesome read on the history and exploration of rocket fuels.  My favorite must be the discussion on chlorine trifluoride.\r\n\r\n\u0026amp;#x200B;\r\n\r\n\u0026gt; *”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is* [***hypergolic***](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.”*","subreddit_name":"spacex","author":"James-Lerch"}]}