John Drury Clark (1907–1988)

The book reportedly originated from Clark's wife telling him to write a book of his workplace stories, but it is really the history of the subtitle, not merely a memoir of Clark's own work in the field. I can't tell how accurate or fair he is, of course, but if there's any self-aggrandizement going on its pretty subtle. Of course, as the leader of one of the major labs involved in propellant research in the '50s and '60s, he might well have felt as grand as he cared to be already.

The story show more is told with style and a great deal of humour - especially regarding the many ways things can go horrendously wrong when working with liquids that are frequently poisonous, unstable, prone to spontaneous detonation, or all three.

Before becoming a rocket scientist, Clark published a couple sf stories, which Isaac Asimov praises highly in the foreword: I find myself tempted to track down a copy of "Minus Planet", apparently the first sf story to deal seriously with anti-matter. show less

Sometimes, it actually is rocket science. Clark was a leading liquid fuels scientist from the 1950s to the 1970s, and this book is a hilarious collection of anecdotes organized around rocket fuels. On the one hand, rocket fuel isn't that hard. Tsiolkovsky figured out that liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen were pretty much as good as chemical fuels can get, and they're used in high performance applications today. But LOX and liquid hydrogen are horrific to work with, and as rockets move from show more applied science experiment to key military technology, fuels have to get a lot less cryogenic and volatile. Hence, people like Clark, and billions of dollars of research into hydrazine, nitric acid, boron compounds, and more exotic chemistries.

Clark is a great story teller, and when he injects human interest, abound funding, lab explosions, and horrible ideas like mercury based rocket fuel, the book is quite good. But it's organized by chemistry, rather than chronologically, so expect to spend a lot of time with reaction diagrams and wandering in the forest of alternatives abandoned because their freezing points were too high, density too low, or they simply failed to ignite reliably.

I want to close with the famous quote about, Flourine Trioxide, the best part of the book.

“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.” show less

Author John D. Clark’s ideal audience is propellant scientists and rocket engineers. They will appreciate his long experience and considerable technical savvy. If you’re not a propellant person, having had solid courses in chemistry will lessen the difficulties. The incantatory power of chemical names provides the narrative with an epic quality, almost as if the chemicals were characters in a saga and the chemists and engineers minor warring gods or spirits. Workers confront odors next show more to which the brimstone ones of Hades are as violets, and always looming near are surly phenomena capable of explosive complaints. I enjoyed Clark’s ever-present sense of humor. Any time the words “I had the bright idea . . . ” appear, you are about to be told how dangerously un-bright that idea proved. And his clear-eyed assessment of the computers of yore is perfect: “Everyone…has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe.” Oh, I love that line.

One thing not especially discussed in detail is the question of value. Clark talks about how programs that had been set aside would be started again years later and still without useful result. What was necessary for these re-starts? New engineering developments elsewhere? Better fundamental chemical understanding developed in academia or industry or other arms efforts? One comes away thinking not necessarily, that re-funding a lapsed program sometimes just boiled down to lobbying skill.

Isaac Asimov contributes a fun introduction. A useful glossary and index are included. show less

Quite often hilarious, this book reveals a lot of the details behind the history of the development of modern rocket fuels, and many notable people and incidents along the way. Extremely readable and well written.