Rocket Basics: A Guide to Solid Propellant Rocketry

If you design, build, test, or fly rockets or missiles (or make pyrotechnics, fireworks, igniters, explosives, or propellants), you'll want this superb reference textbook. Especially useful for "amateur" rocket builders--with its abundance of data and information. A comprehensive and complete introduction to the science and engineering of solid propellant propulsion, from on of the world's largest and most respected rocket companies. An ideal book to learn the details about modern rocket designs and components. Technical design information about motor cases, skirts, insulation, propellant release boots, grains, inhibitors, nozzles, exit cones, igniters. Metals and alloys are discussed, along with reinforced plastics and design techniques for modern rocket engine cases. Several types of igniters are covered, also, including basket, jellyroll, can type, and pyrogens. French rockets of World War I are described, as well as the bazooka, Calliope 4.5-inch battery rocket, the antisubmarine Projector Mark 10 ("Hedgehog"), the German Nebelwerfer 15 and 21-centimeter, Wurfgerat 21-centimeter incendiary rockets, and the British 3 and 5-inch rockets. The history of polysulfide composite propellants is also covered, from the discovery by Dr. J.C. Patrick in 1928 of synthetic rubber. Then the text moves on to the first Thiokol rockets, in 1949. and continues describing the Minuteman, Sergeant, Falcon, Genie, Polaris, and Poseidon. Also covered are the very large solid propellant boosters for the Space Shuttle. The book is dense with high-technology information not found elsewhere. Several pages are devoted to solid propellants (double-base and composites), binders, additives, oxidizers (ammonium perchlorate, potassium perchlorate, lithium perchlorate, sodium perchlorate, and nitronium perchlorate; potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, and sodium nitrate; metallic fuels (aluminum, beryllium, and others).