Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

A classic work in the history of science, described as 'a good book on rocket stuff…that’s a really fun one' by SpaceX founder Elon Musk. This is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. 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.