Word: nitric
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...eight Discoverer satellites into polar orbits. The Agena is designed to ignite when high in the vacuum of space. This is not easy because few fuels will ignite in a vacuum. Bell gets around the problem by using hypergolic fuels (unsymmetrical dime-thylhydrazine and inhibited red fuming nitric acid) that ignite spontaneously as soon as they come in contact. After the first stage burns out, a small charge of solid propellant flares up and generates gas that runs a turbine and pumps the liquid fuels into the Agena's combustion chamber. They start burning immediately, giving...
...every night, is the most explosive city in India. Murderous riots can be touched off by anything from a trifling rise in streetcar fares to the throat-cutting religious strife that killed thousands in 1946. Calcutta rioters have even perfected their own secret weapon: electric-light bulbs filled with nitric acid...
Alone, neither hydrochloric nor nitric acid will dissolve the "noble metals" gold and platinum, but a mixture of the two will. So to this potent corrosive the medieval alchemists gave the name aqua regia-royal water. Last week in Brooklyn, fumes from royal water knocked out scores of factory workers and firemen. left several in hospitals, threatened with severe aftereffects...
...Williamsburg section, an American Cyanamid Co. tank truck backed up to the Radio Receptor Co.'s plant (which makes electronic equipment) to deliver 500 gallons of nitric acid. Driver Benjamin Sidla hooked up his hose to a pipe indicated by employees, started pumping. After a few minutes, a man rushed up from the basement, yelled to Sidla: "You'd better stop. The fumes are terrible down there." Somehow the nitric acid had been diverted into a 3,000-gallon tank containing hydrochloric. Result: royal water, which was already beginning to dissolve the tank's rubber lining, eating...
...warhead, took off the old trigger and its brackets, replaced them with a new trigger and brackets. Somewhere in that process on the fourth missile there was a mishap. Suddenly the missile blew with a roar and a sky-searing pillow of orange flame from burning kerosene and nitric acid fuels. After the eight missiles had gone up, quick-thinking Lieut. Robert F. Daly, the battery commander, dashed out of his office, ordered the remaining Nikes dropped by elevator to their 20-ft deep concrete storage pits...