IGNITION! An Informal History of. Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This newly reissued debut book in the Rutgers University Press Classics Imprint is the story of the search for a rocket propellant that could be trusted to take the 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.

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