Ignition! cover art

Ignition!

An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Ignition!

By: John Drury Clark, Isaac Asimov - foreward
Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Ignition! is the inside story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant that could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio.

Ignition! 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 that eventually took men to the moon, missiles to the planets, and satellites to outer space. A classic work in the history of science, listeners will want to get their hands on this influential classic, available for the first time in decades.

©2018 John Drury Clark (P)2018 Random House Audio Aeronautics & Astronautics Astronomy Astronomy & Space Science History History & Culture History & Philosophy Military Military science Science Witty Technology Classics

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Failure Is Not an Option cover art
Rocket Men cover art
A Brief History of Black Holes cover art
Atomic Accidents cover art
Building the H Bomb: A Personal History cover art
The Science of Breaking Bad cover art
Atomic Adventures cover art
Elemental cover art
How Apollo Flew to the Moon cover art
Seeker cover art
Atomic Awakening cover art
What Do You Care What Other People Think? cover art
Powering the Future cover art
Unstoppable cover art
The Andromeda Strain cover art
Extinction Code cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Great listen but I think only fun for quite knowledgeable people both on mid 20th century history and chemistry on college level.

chemistry history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I build rockets for my day job, what John has done here is give us an insight into the glory days we all take for granted. Written in a candid manner, a must read/listen for any space and rocket fan.

Compelling

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Overall performance, language excellent. The book is more for people who understand chemistry at the semi-pro level. I expected more insights and stories about use of the propellent.

For chemists not wide audience

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I delayed listening to this for a long time because of other reviews as i have no scientific education (just a layman Spaceflight fan) and was worried it may be a textbook more than a narrative. It is not. It reads almost like the biography of a rocket scientist (although it is much wider ranging than that and i found it entertaining and had a few laughs. The narrator is fantastic at conveying the writers obvious enthusiasm and levity. Large portions of it where over my head certainly but graciously it was far from being the oblivious actor drily mispronouncing his way through chemical equations and statistics charts that I'd feared. I could only name the more common propellants going in and I thoroughly enjoyed it.


Thank you so much for recording such a rare and niche book.

Advanced reading but far from impenetrable gem.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
it is an interesting book. But it would be better to read as it gets confusing with all the formulas in it

better to read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The history in book is great and the reading is done well. however chemical formulas may not translate well to audio book format

Interesting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Probably not the ideal audio book due to significant numbers of chemical and algebraic formulas. Will listen to it again with pen and paper at hand.

Very interesting topic sailing through the history of rocket propellants.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.