BotM December: IGNITION! AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF LIQUID ROCKET PROPELLANTS

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM December: IGNITION! AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF LIQUID ROCKET PROPELLANTS

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2018, refer to archives]

2018
January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown]
February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria
May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov
June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
July: Warlock by Oakley Hall
August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott
September: The Magus by John Fowles
October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens

2019:
January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
February: BEAR by Marian Engel
March: V. by Thomas Pynchon
April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2020:
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin
March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini
April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West
June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester
July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle
September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride
October:Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn
November: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) , by Matthew Hongoltz Hetling

Current: Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark

Book available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants-ebook/dp/B076838QS2

Apparent free ebook: http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

About the book

quote:

In a comment to my post on putting out fires last week, one commenter mentioned the utility of the good old sand bucket, and wondered if there was anything that would go on to set the sand on fire. Thanks to a note from reader Robert L., I can report that there is indeed such a reagent: chlorine trifluoride.

. . . I�ll let the late John Clark describe the stuff, since he had first-hand experience in attempts to use it as rocket fuel. From his out-of-print classic Ignition! we have:

�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.�

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time

Leperflesh posted:

I started reading "Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" which is actually a fun and not very technical book written by a steely eyed missile man who spent his career experimenting with rocket fuels, which is exactly as insane and life-threatening as you'd imagine. Forward by Isaac Asimov. It's been out of print for decades but Rutgers University Press finally agreed to reprint it due to popular demand. What books are y'all reading right now?

https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/956309715251732480?s=20

This book was long out of print, to the point that physical copies were selling for multiple thousands of dollars on Amazon (still are, in fact: https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-informal-history-liquid-propellants/dp/0813507251/)

About the Author

quote:

John Drury Clark, Ph.D. (August 15, 1907 � July 6, 1988) was an American rocket fuel developer, chemist, and science fiction writer. He was instrumental in the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and influenced the writing careers of L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, and other authors.[1]

. . .

From 1949 to his retirement in 1970, Clark developed liquid propellants at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station at Dover, New Jersey (after 1960, this became the Army's Liquid Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of Picatinny Arsenal). His title there was chief chemist.[1][2]

In 1962 he married artist Inga Pratt, widow of Fletcher Pratt.[1][5]

He was the author of Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (Rutgers University Press, 1972), based on his experiences in the field,[1] which he dedicated to his wife Inga.[5] It chronicles the development of liquid rocket fuel technology through both technical explanations of the work scientists performed and also anecdotes about the people involved and the often humorous incidents which took place. Copies of the original edition, now out of print, are rare and sell for over $400.[6] In May 2018 Rutgers University Press began publishing Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants again.[7]

. . .

Clark first encountered Robert E. Howard's fantasies of Kull, Conan and Solomon Kane in the magazine Weird Tales. He became an avid fan, and together with Miller he worked out an outline of Conan's career and a map of the world in Howard's invented Hyborian Age in early 1936 from the then-published stories. Miller sent this material to Howard, whose reply confirmed and corrected their findings. Their map became the basis of those that later appeared in the book editions of the Conan stories.[1] Their revised outline, "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" was published in the fanzine The Hyborian Age in 1938.

Thus established as an authority on Conan, Clark was invited to edit and provide introductions for the first book editions of Howard's Conan stories, published by Gnome Press in the 1950s.[1] Expanded versions of his and Miller's essay on Conan, retitled "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian", appeared in the Gnome volume The Coming of Conan in 1953 and (revised by de Camp) in the fanzine Amra, vol. 2, no. 4, in 1959. It was the source of the linking passages between the individual Conan stories in both the Gnome editions and the Lancer paperback editions of the 1960s.

Clark and Miller's Hyborian Age map, together with Howard's own original, are the basis of those published in the Gnome, Lancer, and later editions of the stories.

Pacing

:justpost:

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please post after you read!

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Materials

This blog is similar in tone and references this book a lot:

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things%20I%20won%27t%20work%20with

Suggestions for Future Months

These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have

1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both

2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read

3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about.

Final Note:

Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!

# ¿ Dec 5, 2020 15:33

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# ¿ Jan 14, 2025 15:52

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I'm already like halfway through this and it's a joy to read.

It has some of the same charm that the James Herriott stories did -- that sense that these are stories this guy has been polishing over drinks with his friends for forty years and is only just now finally bothering to set them down.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2020 23:44

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

quote:

Handling liquid hydrogen, then, has become a routine job, although it has to be treated with respect. If it gets loose, of course, it's a ferocious fire and explosion hazard, and all sorts of precautions have to be taken to make sure that oxygen doesn't get into the stuff, freeze, and produce a murderously touchy explosive. And there is a delightful extra something about a hydrogen fire � the flame is almost invisible, and at least in daylight, you can easily walk right into one without seeing it.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2020 14:02

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

We'll start the New Year with Curse of Capistrano.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2020 05:01

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Oh, and I gave this book to my father-in-law for Christmas. He's a retired chemistry professor and as told him some of the example quotes from the book he kept chiming in with "oh yeah, we used to do that!" e.g., Apparently the hydrogen flame burners he used to use, you could never tell if they'd actually ignited or not, so you'd just wave something over them to see if they were on; if a pipe cleaner didn't catch fire when waved over the burner, it wasn't on!

# ¿ Dec 30, 2020 07:15

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BotM December: IGNITION! AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF LIQUID ROCKET PROPELLANTS