Word: nitric
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...debate in the industry today, much like the old argument over air-cooled v. liquid-cooled engines, is over solid rocket propellants v. liquid rocket propellants. Most big rockets, including both Intercontinental and two of the three Intermediate-Range missiles, now use liquid fuels with an oxidizer such as nitric acid or hydrogen peroxide. Liquid systems have produced the highest thrust-weight ratio (80 Ibs. for each i Ib. of weight), but they require an enormously complex system of tanks, valves, pumps and generators. To feed and control its monster engines North American must have pumps capable...
...possible exotic fuels. Paintlike slurries of powdered aluminum or magnesium, suspended in some combustible liquid, contain a lot of energy. In the case of rocket motors, which do not depend on atmospheric oxygen, both the fuel and the oxidizer material with which the fuel combines can be varied. Nitric acid is popular because it is a convenient form of oxygen and yields additional energy when it decomposes. Liquid fluorine is theoretically the best oxidizer, but it is fantastically corrosive and hard to handle. Some material may be discovered that yields fluorine conveniently in the way that nitric acid yields oxygen...
Popular remedies for rattlesnake bite are as numerous as the diseases that venom was once supposed to cure. Klauber lists onions, garlic, chewed tobacco, ammonia, kerosene, gunpowder, nitric acid, lye, quicklime, and freshly killed chickens, split and applied to the wound. All such nostrums are useless, as is the classic remedy, whisky, which Klauber thinks has killed many snakebite victims who would have recovered if left untreated. The only effective drug is antivenin, which must be used with care. Best first-aid treatment is a ligature or tourniquet to isolate the bitten part of the body. The wound should...
...record makes him as untouchable as an ex-jailbird. His old boss refuses to hire him back. Everywhere he meets "the look" which translates "can't take the risk." Then a chemical firm decides to take the risk and hires him. Dick discovers a new process for making nitric dust and seems to be usefully rehabilitated until Author Wagner's boobytrapped plot explodes under...
...three-stage rocket 72 ft. long and 45 in. in maximum diameter. It will have no fins, but will depend for steering on its movable rocket motor and an array of small gas-jets. The tanks holding the propellants (liquid oxygen and gasoline for the first stage, nitric acid and dimethyl-hydrazine for the second) will be thin-walled to save weight, and will have little strength when empty. When they are full and highly pressurized with helium, they will become as rigid as auto tires and strong enough to serve as the structure of the rocket, which will have...