”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.”
I spent years following Lowe for the Things he Won't Work With, but somewhere a few weeks ago I was made aware of his coverage of COVID drug development, which has been phenomenal (and is what he actually does work with).
But ClF3 is harmless compared to dimethyl mercury (which he also goes into) -- and which the USAF contemplated as a reaction mass for air to air missiles, until they realized the mercury in the exhaust plume would melt their launch aircraft wings (not to mention being a potent neurotoxin), at which point they tried to sell it to the US Navy!
This book is way more entertaining than one would expect of a book from 1972 about rocket propellants. It's now back in print, probably because Musk called it "fun".
In addition to the infamous section about chlorine trifluoride and running shoes, I learned a lot about hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer and monopropellant, as well as enjoyed a section on nuclear rockets.
If you're into this sort of nerdery, you might enjoy The Orbital Index, my weekly newsletter about the space industry. https://orbitalindex.com
This is a classic. Although it's a subject with absolutely no relevance to the vast majority of readers, it's written in a funny dry style (for a good example, see e.g. the quote posted in another comment).
It's also interesting to reflect on rocket fuels since the publication of the book.
- Military rockets have mostly shifted from hypergolics to solid fuels.
- Orbital rockets mostly use LOX + suitable fuel. For the fuel, seems to be good arguments for and against everything from hydrogen to heavier hydrocarbons like kerosene.
- Exotics (flourine, boron, etc.) have disappeared.
- For hypergolics, the remaining use is mostly RCS's, deep space stuff, but not "main" propulsion. And the oxidizer is mostly NTO rather than acid that seemed to be Clark's favorite.
Regarding hypergols, I love the fact that you are absolutely correct that they’re mostly relegated to places where you _need_ autoignition these days, but then you look at the Proton rocket family...
I should have made it clearer that I was writing about trends, not absolutes.
So yes, hypergolic powered rockets are still around, but mostly they are old designs on the way out. The Proton family you mention was on the drawing board before the book was published, and is to be replaced by the kerolox powered Angara family.
Similarly, the Chinese hypergolic Long March 2/3 families are old designs in the process of being replaced by the kerolox powered Long March 5/6/7 families.
I’m not too familiar with the Long March family but that does make sense.
More random engine nerdery:
- It’s really exciting to see all of the development going into full-flow combustion metholox engines these days; BE-4 and Raptor have been incredible projects to follow.
- The Rocketdyne F-1 is still the most impressive rocket engine to me, although the RS-25 is a very close second. Watching videos of the Apollo launches and seeing those things in action is absolutely awe-inspiring.
Many early space rockets were outgrowths of military ballistic missile programs, where hypergolics were favoured due to storability, as being able to launch on a moment's notice was critical. But for launching satellites or humans into orbit, that's not a particularly relevant consideration.
On the downside, hypergolics are expensive, and their toxicity makes handling them more expensive still. Meanwhile, cryogenic technology has developed and is today affordable and reliable. Heck, even amateur efforts like Copenhagen Suborbitals are using LOX.
We had never had such a dreadful assignment. Anyone working with this “superstink” is branded and given a wide berth. No matter how amorous his spouse may be, passion crumples despite baths, Chlorox and Dentine. For a while we made isovaleroyl chloride at Cedar Terrace. It created pandemonium among residents who first sniffed each other, came to the plant to sniff us, and then sniffled to their lawyers.
> The biggest stinker I have run across... Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the metaphysical stench of this material.
> I believe that this lovely compound is commercially available (if you’re anywhere close to anyone making it, you’ll know about it)
The most jaw dropping but easily missed story I remember from that book:
"That was the case once, when we were all seated around the table in the middle of the lab, having lunch. I glanced up, and noticed that the contents of one flask was turning a little brown. "Who owns that one?" [...they hit the deck as it exploded]
If you liked Ignition you may also like Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. I thought it was well written and enjoyed his style of weaving the story throughout the book.
For context, this book was out of print for a long time and the only way to get it was via PDF. The recent re-interest in rockets has led to it being re-published.
I found the reprint extremely difficult to read due to poor layout decisions. In particular, the font they used for subscripts (the 3 in ClF₃) is tiny and illegible. And there are rather a lot of those in a chemistry book....
Before it was reprinted, a buddy was going through hard times and to help him out, I bought his hard hard-cover, near mint copy for the going rate at the time: $500.
I read the book cover to cover after finding references to it by Derek Lowe on his pipeline blog [1]. Learned a lot about chemistry and the enormous investment that went into the space age (mostly because of overlapping technology for ICBMs and other rocket powered weapons) which is daunting as this book ONLY covers what's been declassified as of the 80s in propelants.
It seems this book is best if you read some small excerpts. I tried to read the whole book but I found the author to be a little too full of himself to make the book enjoyable.
But it helps that I've personally known very smart people with that same dry style of humor. Whose self-assurance was completely justified. I therefore read it as not pretentious, but as understated.
It helps that the actual content could only have been written by someone who genuinely was extremely smart.
I really struggled with this book too. I am fascinated by the research behind space travel but I find some of the books really hard to enjoy. Another one I have struggled with is Sunburst and Luminary, I may not have the technical background to appreciate it.
Both of you may wish to give the audiobook a try. I had the same problem with the font being nigh-unreadble. I found the narration in the audio version to be very nice.
I know what you mean, although I enjoyed the book very much.
The stories about Clark hearing that <scientist X> was working on <project Y> openly when they had already worked on classified <project Y>, so they had to get Y declassified quickly so they could scoop X were particularly unappealing.
It's always a pleasure to see Sciencemadness linked here. The link is usually to this book, and with good reason. It's a classic. You don't have to be a chemist to enjoy it (though that helps). I have a main account here but I never comment on Sciencemadness submissions through it because the site so easily reveals my real-life identity.
I first discovered Ignition! on the shelves of the Medford, Oregon public library when I was 10 years old. I was hooked on my first reading and would go on to read it several more times before I entered my teens. It was tied with Tenney L. Davis's The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives as my favorite non-fiction book.
I started the Sciencemadness library [1] a long time ago, before the big book-scanning initiatives like Google Books started. The library still contains a large number of books that are unremarkable except for the fact that they were among the first digitized books covering certain facets of chemistry to be made available online.
The library does contain a couple of books less famous than Ignition! but also potentially interesting to non-chemist readers:
Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?
This is an anecdotal, autobiographical sketch of Max Gergel and his adventures as a young (then older) mad scientist building the business Columbia Organic Chemicals.
Columbia Organic Chemicals and its founder, Max Gergel, had the unusual honor of mention and praise by name in Kary Mullis's Nobel lecture [2]:
"I never tired of tinkering in labs. During the summer breaks from Georgia Tech, Al Montgomery and I built an organic synthesis lab in an old chicken house on the edge of town where we made research chemicals to sell. Most of them were noxious or either explosive. No one else wanted to make them, somebody wanted them, and so their production became our domain. We suffered no boredom and no boss. We made enough money to buy new equipment. Max Gergel, who ran Columbia Organic Chemicals Company, and who was an unusually nice man, encouraged us and bought most of our products, which he resold. There were no government regulators to stifle our fledgling efforts, and it was a golden age, but we didn't notice it. We learned a lot of organic chemistry."
The chicken coop lab full of noxious chemicals isn't far removed from how Max Gergel got his start in the chemistry business either.
In this humorous, anecdotal chronicle of Max's life from high school mad scientist to successful operator of a chemical supply business, you'll learn where metallic potassium should NOT be stored, how to prepare perfectly alcohol-free n-dodecyl bromide, and why one man would be crazy enough to want a preparative scale procedure for methyl isocyanide. You'll also learn, humorously but quite clearly, how the golden age of "no government regulators" contained the seeds of its own destruction, as horrendous odors, accidental poisonings, dumpings, fires, and miscellaneous accidents and occupational hazards take their toll on Gergel and his employees, neighbors, and surrounding environs.
The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in Peace
Famed Harvard chemistry professor Louis Fieser's personal history of development of incendiary weapons during WW II, including the infamous Bat Bomb, plus development of cortisone, antimalarial drugs, and educational material for students.
Louis Fieser joined the American war effort before America had even officially entered World War II, as one of 20 professor invited to the house of Roger Adams in October 1940 to join the National Defense Research Committee. He was instructed early on to work on chemical vesicants but, considering them inhumane, quickly made a lateral move to begin development of gelled gasoline incendiary weapons. He led the research effort behind napalm, several other components of large-scale incendiary ordnance, and smaller special purpose incendiary devices for use by spies and saboteurs.
Fieser's strangest project was development of the Bat Bomb: a cluster-bomb arrangement of hibernating bats carrying time-delayed incendiaries. As the bats fell from bombers over enemy cities, they would rouse from hibernation mid-air and seek shelter in attics of the city below. Their incendiaries would then start concealed, hard-to-fight fires. The project was surprisingly successful for one never deployed, and included the own-goal immolation of an administrative building during testing.
When Fieser was not working on setting fires he also had time to begin work on the first edition of his organic chemistry textbook, research cortisone chemistry, and work on antimalarial drugs. The information given late in the book about getting cats to pose for photographs with chemical apparatus is invaluable because it comes from real experience.
Thanks for your efforts. I often wonder how many teen boys get recruited into declaring a chemistry or chemical engineering major due to those classic books. I know it worked on me and several other people.
Chemistry is pretty cool. A little harder to do at home as an amateur than something like computer science; maybe that challenge makes it more rewarding?
When I was a kid in the 1980s it didn't seem harder than my other hobby, programming a Commodore 64. The relative difficulty is probably higher now, and of course your friends/neighbors/postal carrier may be more paranoid that anyone with chemistry equipment is a "drug cook."
My hands-on work with chemistry started by growing crystals when I was in the second grade. By third grade I was making very simple fireworks. I remember showing some of them off to classmates at my birthday party when I turned 9. By the time I was 10 I had taken over half of the family garage for my home lab.
I double majored in chemistry and computer science in college. I went on to graduate school afterward, working with computational chemistry and HPC. That's where I faced up to the reality of the job market. I didn't want to be an overworked, underpaid postdoc. Competition for academic tenure is brutal. The job prospects for non-academic chemists did not look promising. Since I had already been writing software for 15 years at that point, it was easy to transition to software as a career when I was done with school. I still love chemistry and would work in it or an allied field if it offered pay/perks comparable to software development.
Even software-in-the-field-of-chemistry underpays: when I started applying for software jobs Schrödinger made me an offer, but the pay was a third less than an entry level backend developer position for a West Coast startup. And they wanted me to relocate to New York City at my own expense.
Even though I am glum about the employment prospects for chemists in the USA, I still love chemistry and encourage any interest I find. If you are looking to encourage a child -- or even take it up as a hobby yourself -- a good place to start is Robert Bruce Thompson's Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments:
For more advanced hobbyists there are still a few forums around like that on Sciencemadness. (I think that Sciencemadness is probably the best one in English, but I am biased.)
You'll need to send an email requesting an account if you want to sign up. Trying to keep up with playing whack-a-mole against automated link-spam bots was too exhausting.
"[Louis Fieser] was instructed early on to work on chemical vesicants but, considering them inhumane, quickly made a lateral move to begin development of gelled gasoline incendiary weapons."
It's best to check HN search, for example like this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
See also:
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155394
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683778