This is one of the best technical books ever written.
My review on amazon:
"Rocket books are often page turners. I reviewed Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Systems" a few years back. I picked it up as a cure for insomnia, and ended up reading most of it in one night. The nice thing about rocket science; it's not really "rocket science." If you have a background in physics or chemistry, rocket science is a perfect level of semi-light reading. There is chemistry, neat, but conceptually simple thermodynamics, mechanical engineering and materials science. None of it is at a really high level: rocket science is the type of thing you could do on a slide rule. People did.
This book has a similar quality; it's pretty easy to read (though I confess I bogged down a bit in some of the chemistry sections). I didn't read it for the science, though. I don't really care about rocket fuels. I learned the basics about rocket propellants from Sutton. It's conceptually simple "look at the periodic table" stuff. This book is about the implementation details, and how they were discovered. I don't plan on building any rockets any time soon, so it's more or less irrelevant to me. I suppose this could be helpful to folks who might have some ambitions to make some fancy rockets, but are too precious to use LOX and Kerosene or dinitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine.
Mostly, I read it because it's uproariously funny. Research involving physical objects is funny. Why is it funny? Because at the end of the day, we're really just dumb monkeys playing around with forces we only partially understand. Rocket research has some of the highest comedic potential because it involves smelly things which explode. Had I only known this, I would have arranged to have been born in the 1920s, so I could do all the cool research that happened in the 1950s. Alas, the heroic age of rocket fuel research is now over.
Still, we have these anecdotes, which are unique, and possibly eternal. To quote the book, "if you, gentle reader, have never seen a nervous rocket mechanic, complete with monkey suit, being buzzed by nine thousand demented bats and trying to beat them off with a shovel, there is something missing from your experience. ""
> None of it is at a really high level: rocket science is the type of thing you could do on a slide rule. People did.
Rockets have a very fine line between a successful mission and failure. That means you've got to understand the math, do the math correctly, and understand and account for the limitations of the mathematical models.
Otherwise your rocket will be too heavy to fly, or will explode/disintegrate when flying.
Some other good rocket reading: "V2" by Dornberger
Ironically a lot of Ignition is about experimentation rather than modeling - while they could predict the energy of a reaction, all sorts of other vital properties like detonation resistance had to be found out empirically.
It's a pity that the solid fuel chapter basically ends up with "no one is going to use solid fuels". I would die to read some anecdotes about how they became reality, in the same style. Though that chapter did have the lovely recollection of experiments on enriching regular liquid rocket fuel with mercury, just because they could.
Almost certainly a repost, but it's a tremendous little book. Mix of dry chemistry lab notes with hair-raising anecdotes. The history of early NASA rocket fuel research by someone who was there.
I'll second your Gergel recommendation. Gergel's book is not quite as good as "Ignition" because he brags a little more and gets specific a little less, but it's still good. The place it's better than "Ignition" is in the descriptions of the insane risks which early chemists took - with their own lives, their neighbors' lives, and the lives of anyone living there afterwards. It's a fascinating piece of anthropology.
Hear, hear! this is fascinating book that anyone interested in rocketry will enjoy. Even if you are not interested in the engineering or chemistry the description of the professional community and process of invention is worth reading.
> this is fascinating book that anyone interested in rocketry will enjoy
It's criminal to limit it to people interested in rocketry. It's also fascinating to anyone interested in chemistry, engineering, history, and plain "stuff going boom", one of the Internet's most hilarious stories (Derek Lowe's "Sand won't save you this time") is essentially a straight excerpt from Ignition!, 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.
And frankly, just open the PDF and look at pages 2 and 3, if that doesn't convince you the book is worth reading I'm not sure you have a soul.
Plus it's a very short book, the body itself clocks in at under 190 pages.
I'm a coder. I have only the vaguest claim to knowing any physics thanks to graduation requirements. It's just a fun book. Maybe having had a job where you're asked to do something crazy helps, but I have no problems recommending this to anyone who might be interested.
If you're a reader who can tolerate a memoir, and are looking for something a little different, I have no hesitation recommending ignition.
> 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. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole
My review on amazon:
"Rocket books are often page turners. I reviewed Sutton's "Rocket Propulsion Systems" a few years back. I picked it up as a cure for insomnia, and ended up reading most of it in one night. The nice thing about rocket science; it's not really "rocket science." If you have a background in physics or chemistry, rocket science is a perfect level of semi-light reading. There is chemistry, neat, but conceptually simple thermodynamics, mechanical engineering and materials science. None of it is at a really high level: rocket science is the type of thing you could do on a slide rule. People did.
This book has a similar quality; it's pretty easy to read (though I confess I bogged down a bit in some of the chemistry sections). I didn't read it for the science, though. I don't really care about rocket fuels. I learned the basics about rocket propellants from Sutton. It's conceptually simple "look at the periodic table" stuff. This book is about the implementation details, and how they were discovered. I don't plan on building any rockets any time soon, so it's more or less irrelevant to me. I suppose this could be helpful to folks who might have some ambitions to make some fancy rockets, but are too precious to use LOX and Kerosene or dinitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine.
Mostly, I read it because it's uproariously funny. Research involving physical objects is funny. Why is it funny? Because at the end of the day, we're really just dumb monkeys playing around with forces we only partially understand. Rocket research has some of the highest comedic potential because it involves smelly things which explode. Had I only known this, I would have arranged to have been born in the 1920s, so I could do all the cool research that happened in the 1950s. Alas, the heroic age of rocket fuel research is now over.
Still, we have these anecdotes, which are unique, and possibly eternal. To quote the book, "if you, gentle reader, have never seen a nervous rocket mechanic, complete with monkey suit, being buzzed by nine thousand demented bats and trying to beat them off with a shovel, there is something missing from your experience. ""