[HN Gopher] Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Prope... ___________________________________________________________________ Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (1972) [pdf] Author : Tomte Score : 118 points Date : 2022-07-09 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (library.sciencemadness.org) (TXT) w3m dump (library.sciencemadness.org) | nibbleshifter wrote: | There's a reprint of this available for the last few years now, I | end up rereading my physical copy about once a year or so since | getting it. | | Always find some fun new thing to research on rereading. | jwsteigerwalt wrote: | This is such an awesome book. I was delighted when it came back | into print a few years ago. | WJW wrote: | Ah yes, the book that many of the best rocket engineering quotes | come from. I've always been partial to this one: | | "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." | [deleted] | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | And now this has me about to start searching for "metal | flourine fires" on YouTube! | dtgriscom wrote: | Obligatory reference to Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" | series: | | https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo... | Cipater wrote: | Thank you so much for sharing. | b33j0r wrote: | This is the passage that taught me the word hypergolic, while | the book itself tried its best to teach me how to write about | obscure subjects naturally. | | It feels like hanging out with him through his career, and | you're glad along with him that he didn't accidentally breathe | in too much red fuming nitric acid. Math be damned, I give this | book 11/10 | jstrebel wrote: | If you have the slightest interest in rockets, you should read | this funny and informative book. You don't need to be a chemist | to follow. I have a hardcopy at home and recommend to read it | this way, as the contents are sometimes densely explained and you | want to look up some additional information on the Internet in | parallel. | RBerenguel wrote: | I got the Audible version and it works very well, given its | talkative style | dredmorbius wrote: | An HN perennial: | | 2 years ago 52 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23192651 | | 3 years ago 34 comments] | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20729115 | | 5 years ago 19 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155394 | | 7 years ago 29 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778 | [deleted] | russellbeattie wrote: | I bought this as an audiobook, not realizing how dense some of | the chapters are. The narrator is actually great, but you need to | be ready to hit the 30-second skip button a lot as he gets into | the details. | | The narrator, Jonathan Todd Ross (just looked him up) was a | champ. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and there is a wide range | of quality and this guy nailed it. The book is filled with so | many insane chemical names it must have been exhausting! | | https://www.audible.com/pd/Ignition-Audiobook/B07CTTXLL6 | paulsutter wrote: | I didn't see liquid methane (CH4) during my quick scan, is it | covered in the book? | | In a victory of worse-is-better, SpaceX is using methane because | it makes Starship/Raptor simple, cheap, and more reliable (a | passive cooling system is enough to store it, storable for a more | extended period than hydrogen, does not leak, does not require | insulation on the fuel tank, and rocket design is simpler) | | Methane makes in-space refueling easier, and methane can be | produced, handled, and stored more readily on Mars. It also makes | Starship rapidly reusable (unike Falcon, whose kerosene Merlin | engines need to be cleaned between flights to remove soot) | perihelions wrote: | I don't think they were thinking about reusable rocket engines | at that point in time. The primary (?) advantage of methane | over kerosene is that it doesn't deposit soot on engine parts, | which is highly important for SpaceX today, but not really | anyone else in history. | | Here's one reference to methane-LOX in the book ("nobody could | see any point"): | | - _" The VfR was completely unaware of all of this when they | started work. Oberth had originally wanted to use methane as | fuel, but as it was hard to come by in Berlin, their first work | was with gasoline and oxygen. Johannes Winkler, however, picked | up the idea, and working independently of the VfR, was able to | fire a liquid oxygen-liquid methane motor before the end of | 1930. This work led nowhere in particular, since, as methane | has a performance only slightly superior to that of gasoline, | and is much harder to handle, nobody could see any point to | following it up."_ (pages 7-8) | | There's more references to methane + [exotic oxidizers], | because (going off my memory) they were to trying to min-max | Isp performance, for interplanetary probes, constrained to a | certain cryogenic temperature range. (This predates | radioisotope heaters, I believe. Not *electric* generators -- | these little heater things [0]). Liquid CH4 looked like a good | match for the deep-space thermal environment. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_heater_unit | | - _" Deep space probes, working at low temperatures, will | probably use methane, ethane, and diborane for fuels, although | propane is a possibility. The oxidizers will be OF2, and | possibly ONF3 and NO2F, while perchloryl fluoride, ClO3F, would | be useful as far out as Jupiter."_ (page 191) | | (If anyone at Google is reading this, could you consider adding | search support for numerals in the superscripts and subscripts | block [1]; they don't seem to be normalized in a sensible way. | ClO3F and ClO3F are entirely different searches). | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superscripts_and_Subscripts_(U... | khuey wrote: | > The primary (?) advantage of methane over kerosene | | The other big advantage of methane for SpaceX is that it can | (in theory) be synthesized chemically from the Martian | atmosphere. | dmurray wrote: | There are plenty of references to methane, but no in-depth | story about systems using it. | | The last part of the book, attempting to predict what fuels | would be popular, prescribed methane for deep space probes, for | many of the same reasons you give, but failed to foresee | reusable boosters or other departures from the status quo. | | > as methane has a performance only slightly superior to that | of gasoline, and is much harder to handle, nobody could see any | point... | | > For the big first-stage space boosters we will continue to | use liquid oxygen and RP-1 or the equivalent. They work and | they're cheap -- and Saturn V uses a lot of propellant! Later, | we may shift to hydrogen as a first-stage fuel, but it appears | unlikely. The development of a reusable booster won't change | the picture, but if a ram-rocket booster is developed all bets | are off. | | > For the upper stages, the hydrogen-oxygen combination of the | J-2 is very satisfactory, and will probably be used for a long | time. Later, as more energy is needed, there may be a shift, | for the final stage, to hydrogen-fluorine or hydrogen-lithium- | fluorine... | | > Deep space probes, working at low temperatures, will probably | use methane, ethane, and diborane for fuels, although propane | is a possibility. The oxidizers will be OF2, and possibly ONF3 | and NO2F... | kqr wrote: | I don't personally care much about rocketry, and chemistry is | easily one of my weakest subjects. But this book hooked me early | on and I couldn't stop reading. I even learned a little chemistry | along the way! | | Fascinating insight into a crazy part of industrial engineering | history. | WalterBright wrote: | Another fine book along those lines is "Rocket Manual For | Amateurs" by Brinley. | | https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Manual-Amateurs-Bertrand-Brinl... | | Unfortunately, it's rare and expensive. | | The first page: | | "If your answer to the first question is that you are thrilled | and fascinated by things that burn and explode, and you love to | watch fireworks displays, or you simply want to send a rocket | higher than the boy next door, then this book is not written for | you, and you had better find something less dangerous to amuse | you." | | I encountered that book when I was 9. Naturally, I had to read | the rest of it! What boy could resist? | sciencemadness wrote: | I didn't realize that one was rare and expensive! I have it | sitting on my shelf next to the 1965 Model Rocketry manual from | Estes Industries. But it looks like archive.org already has a | scan, so I don't need to scan it myself: | | https://archive.org/details/RocketManualForAmateursByCapt.Be... | ridgeguy wrote: | I think I was 10 when I found this. The interest in rocketry it | kindled has lasted my lifetime. Wonderful book! Wish I still | had my copy for old time's sake. | sciencemadness wrote: | This was a favorite book of mine as a child. It was one of the | last books that I scanned and uploaded to sciencemadness.org. | That's probably for the best, since I was still learning how to | make good scans and PDFs with the early books. | | When I first started scanning and uploading books, Google Books | did not yet exist. The HathiTrust did not yet exist. Project | Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders _did_ exist, but their | focus on perfect text transcription of non-technical writing did | not really suit the books that I wanted to share. | | I stopped scanning books because the world largely caught up and | surpassed what I could do. Between HathiTrust, Library Genesis, | and sci-hub, there has never been a better time for doing deep- | dive reading from the comfort of one's own living room. But I'm | proud that so many people have enjoyed my scan of this book over | the years. | RF_Savage wrote: | Big thanks for scanning it and for the sciencemadness library! | djmips wrote: | Google Books exists but it often feels like a tease since so | much content is not viewable. | ranger207 wrote: | You're the source of that PDF? I can't thank you enough for how | much I appreciate that! You, plus Dr Clark of course, single- | handedly sparked my interest in chemistry, which up until that | point I'd considered a boring collection of facts to rote | memorize. This book convinced me to take chemistry as my last | undergrad lab rather an easier course, which really opened my | eyes to the fascinating and complex physics going on down | there. Thanks so much for your effort in spreading knowledge of | the world! | sciencemadness wrote: | Wow, time flies. I scanned this book more than 12 years ago. | Here's my original announcement on the Sciencemadness forum: | | https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=24. | .. | | I'm glad that it was so inspirational for you! If this is the | only thing you've ever seen from sciencemadness, you should | also check out the other books in the library: | | http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/index.html | | It's kind of a grab-bag of old scanned texts that I compiled | from random third party sources in the earlier days of the | web plus those that I scanned personally. | | Also see the Los Alamos Technical Reports collection if you | might be interested in oddball chemistry, physics, and | material science publications from America's premiere nuclear | weapons laboratory: | | http://www.sciencemadness.org/lanldocs.html | | Like "Chemistry of Uranium and Plutonium" -- containing both | theoretical and practical documentation for the handling, | processing, and analysis of plutonium in the laboratory: | | http://library.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/la- | pubs/00... | | Or "Foundations of Radiation Hydrodynamics" if your role in a | nuclear weapons complex is downstream from that of the | chemists and metallurgists: | | http://library.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib- | www/books/0041... | kragen wrote: | I deeply appreciate your commitment to cultivating knowledge | and wisdom despite the restrictions placed on them by the | ignorant. | baq wrote: | absolutely a must read on any hacker's reading list. a great | piece of writing on what you'd think is a boring topic. | aero-glide2 wrote: | Details many experiments with so many propellants. But right now, | most upcoming rockets just use ch4 + ox. | DylanSp wrote: | Those experiments generally needed to be run to figure out what | was possible and what the different realistic options were, | though. There's also more uses for propellants than just | orbital launchers; propellant for ICBMs (and other strategic | missiles), thrusters for attitude control, some of the | monopropellants can also be used to power APUs for hydraulics | or electricity. But yes, most applications these days go with | simpler, more stable fuels, especially for commercial companies | that don't want to spend a bunch of extra money wrangling more | sensitive fuels for a few extra seconds of Isp. | perihelions wrote: | Most deep-space probes use storable hypergolics (hydrazines + | nitrogen tetroxide). Some of the crazy parts of this book | actually came true! | | (I don't intuitively understand how the JWST has $10 billion | precision optics and hypercorrosive oxidizers right next to | each other, and nothing bad happens. Engineering baffles me). | DylanSp wrote: | Not just deep-space probes; Dragon, Orion, and I think | Starliner all use hypergols. Plenty of satellites do as well, | though I think there's a trend towards using various sorts of | electric propulsion. Really, the big misprediction of the | book (looking at chapter 13, "What Happens Next") is that it | doesn't consider missiles (and some upper/deep-space stages) | moving to solid propellant; but it's a book about _liquid_ | propellants, so I 'm not too surprised. | colechristensen wrote: | The propellant tanks don't leak, the combustion products | aren't corrosive. | | Designing spacecraft is like "does this material ever outgas | anything which might affect other parts? I guess we can't use | it" much less leaky propellant tanks. | robocat wrote: | > the combustion products aren't corrosive | | Nitpick: if the chemical combustion is perfectly efficient, | there are no corrosive byproducts or remainder. | bernulli wrote: | Nitnitpick: and we _know_ it isn't and the corrosive | propellants _will_ contaminate surfaces: | | https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a588174.pdf | bernulli wrote: | Absolutely! I'm sure they analyzed for that, but backflow to | the opposite direction of the nozzle is quite unintuitive but | normal in rarefied flow, with propellant deposition next to | the nozzle possible and documented [1]. Just because you | point it away from the sensitive stuff does not mean it won't | get there and leave nasty traces. | | [1] https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a588174.pdf | 2143 wrote: | rcarmo wrote: | I love this book. It is by far the most fun I've had with | chemicals, and very humorously written. | RF_Savage wrote: | Gergels "Excuse me sir, would you like to buy a kilo of | isopropyl bromide?" has a similar vibe as far as books go. | | It is conveniently also available on sciencemadness, where I | ran across it. | | https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isop... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-09 23:00 UTC)