[clug] [OT] book recommendations?

Brenton Ross rossb at fwi.net.au
Tue Dec 24 11:22:40 UTC 2019


Wow!
I have just finished reading Ignition!
How any of them survived those experiments is a true wonder.

I especially liked the chapter "Monopropellants"

What were they thinking?  

It seems to me that with a monopropellant the distinction between the
combustion chamber and the fuel tank is nothing more than a matter of
perspective - the chemicals certainly didn't care.

I suspect that were so caught up in the details that no one bothered to
ask questions like "is this ever going to be safe to use in the field?"

Perhaps the lesson we should all take away is that sometimes we need to
take a big step back and look at the big picture.

Hoping everyone has a safe and merry Xmas, and all the best for coming
year.

Brenton



On Mon, 2019-12-23 at 16:40 +1100, Mike Carden via linux wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Does anyone have favourites or recommendations for books of this
> > type?
> > 
> 
> 
> Well, it's not Rocket Science, but... wait, no... actually it is. The
> brilliant 'Ignition' is freely available these days and is an
> informative
> and at times hilarious history of the development of rocket engines,
> the
> incredibly interesting fuels that make them possible and the at times
> lunatic experimenters trying to figure out what works:
> 
> https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
> 
> 
> I think that Ignition is perhaps one of the inspirations for Derek
> Lowe's
> brilliant series of articles under the title of 'Things I won't work
> with'.
> Here's just one example from a search engine hit:
> 
> https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride
> 
> 
> -- 
> MC




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