Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

John Clark tells here, with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy, the story of the search for a power packaging which could be trusted to take man into space. Against a lot of the "laws of nature," as they used to be called, it was a hazardous enterprise with no certainty of success or safety. It is the special virtue of this narrative that it is a primary historical document. John Clark actually helped develop explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. He worked with and knew dozens of his peers in an enterprise which eventually took men to the moon, missiles to the planets, and satellites to outer space. It is quite a story. The reader will find here that the storyteller is as much a part of the story as the equations he occasionally uses. History like this is made by a special sort of person, and that is surely one of the virtues of John Clark's narrative. It leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that experimenting with the basic energies is not for the faint of heart. And that a sense of humor helps when the conflict between matter and energy does not proceed according to the rules. Isaac Asimov's foreword is eloquent on this point: "There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily.

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retroformatApr 2026

Other books I’ve much enjoyed, when your interest is in structural or other failures:

Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori, a wide ranging history of structural failures of various kinds, and their causes.

Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark, which is a personal memoir from a senior researcher with many decades experience developing rocket fuels - he is the proverbial Rocket Scientist. Most interesting, and amusing (in a morbid way), is the quite different culture of safety “back in the day” of this somewhat esoteric engineering/chemistry field.

(okay, I'll stop now!)

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devilbunnyApr 2026

There are opposed thrusters, but I assume that in atmosphere and under parachute canopy it’s harder to make sure they are perfectly opposed.

Heating likely plays a role as well.

I am not a rocket engineer, but I have read How Apollo Flew to the Moon and Ignition!: an informal history of liquid rocket propellants, both of which cover these issues. Highly recommended.

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FrojoSMar 2026

> I think the propulsion system will be the easy part.

Really? I think rocket science is still not easy. Just look at how much nation states are spending on maintaining their liquid and/or solid fuel rocket programs. If they even have one, let alone both.

This book might give some insights into the why https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

Quote: "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 It has recently been shown that an argon fluoride, probably ArF2, does exist, but it is unstable except at cryogenic temperatures.

[...] 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."

Granted this is about a fuel that is AFAIK not used for MANPADs, but the joke about the running shoes could be made about most aspects of rocket propulsion.

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cookingrobotSep 2025

May be too technical for kids, but “Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants” is wonderful.

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

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PaulHouleAug 2025

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

This classic book tells the story of liquid rocket fuel development

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

You'd think that you could mix any of a wide range of fuels with a wide range of oxidizers and get a good rocket fuel but it does not really work that way, most combinations are pretty awful, including the ethanol + O2 used in the V2. There was a time when there was interest in "storable" liquid propellants but once solid propellants reached this level of maturity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman

those were obsolete.

It is hard to beat H2+oxygen or hydrocarbons+oxygen if you pick the right hydrocarbons (rocket kerosene isn't quite the kerosene you use in a lamp)

I'm not sure if ethylene is really that good of a rocket fuel. In the context of a space economy I see it as a "reactive carbon" substance which is easy to make other things out of, say,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene

in the sense that glucose is reactive carbon you can build structural carbohydrates and all sorts of biological molecules out of. There is talk about SpaceX establishing a methane economy on Mars, methane is definitely an easy to synthesize rocket fuel but it not very reactive and not on the path to making other things you might want.

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FiatLuxDaveJul 2025

Not the poster above, but as someone who also has a copy of Ignition! in their library, I think you might enjoy the pdf version:

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

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