While there are some storage headaches -- the stuff decomposes slowly no matter what you do, so you must provide for tank venting -- otherwise peroxide is much easier and safer to handle. Its bad reputation is half outright myth and half the result of 1940s experience with seriously impure peroxide. To quote a friend, a rocket-propulsion professional, who investigated the matter as part of a study some years ago:
"As far as we could find out, the stories about problems with peroxide were just that, stories... Peroxide, now, seems to only very rarely do anything exciting, at all. And, even then, it seems to never do many of the things attributed to it in the stories."
Of course hydrogen peroxide can be dangerous - relatively recent explosion in Sweden (peroxidepropulsion.com) reminds us about that. At the same time significant volumes of it with more than 70% concentration are routinely used - so a chemist can calibrate the feeling.
As a former-chemist, I can attest that oxidizers in general are pretty concerning.
You are correct that hydrogen peroxide (even up to 70%) is pretty safe by itself, but a chemist like Derek Lowe would use hydrogen peroxide in a reaction. Since he's an organic chemist, nearly every reaction is going to involve adding that oxidizer to a reducing agent (almost every organic molecule out there). When you add an oxidizer to a reducing agent, you're creating an unstable mixture that would love to explode. Just because it hasn't exploded on people in the past, doesn't mean it won't in the future.
I can remember doing some really stupid things when I was in grad school. I had a create pure m-CPBA [1] for a reaction (great! an oxidizer and reducing agent all in one molecule!!). Thinking I was smart, I purified a a lot of it, like 20 g (smart folks only purify what they need, like 1 or 2 g). To make sure it was dry I put it on a vacuum pump and then heated the flask with a heat gun. Nothing happened, but looking back I was dam lucky it didn't explode. If it had, I likely would have been seriously injured.
Here - http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/peroxide.html - second message mentions Clark's "Ignition!" facts, and in first Henry Spencer states:
While there are some storage headaches -- the stuff decomposes slowly no matter what you do, so you must provide for tank venting -- otherwise peroxide is much easier and safer to handle. Its bad reputation is half outright myth and half the result of 1940s experience with seriously impure peroxide. To quote a friend, a rocket-propulsion professional, who investigated the matter as part of a study some years ago:
"As far as we could find out, the stories about problems with peroxide were just that, stories... Peroxide, now, seems to only very rarely do anything exciting, at all. And, even then, it seems to never do many of the things attributed to it in the stories."
Of course hydrogen peroxide can be dangerous - relatively recent explosion in Sweden (peroxidepropulsion.com) reminds us about that. At the same time significant volumes of it with more than 70% concentration are routinely used - so a chemist can calibrate the feeling.