Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants [John D. Clark]

[Good Science] [Gasoline] [Parsons]

Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

John D. Clark

Rutgers University Press, NJ. 2021. Seventh paperback printing. Like new.

From the publisher:

"This newly reissued debut book in the Rutgers University Press Classics imprint is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety.

Acclaimed scientist and sci-fi author John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise which eventually took men to the moon, missiles to the planets, and satellites to outer space."

I love this book. I love it so much I intended to reissue it but then found out Rutgers had the rights. An absolute barn burner end to end. Seemingly already becoming hard to find....again. Buy this classic and ignore the terrible Elon Musk blurb on the cover, which I won't spoil but is about as good as Mitt Romney's "lemon...water....good" quote.