Science Fiction and Science Fact…

I was just talking with someone here at work and they mentioned being introduced to the works of Charlie Stross and in particular the laundry files. That got me thinking about some of the tangential things that I discovered after following Charlie’s blog for a while. The book Ignition is a very cool walk through the early work in developing rocket propellants…particularly fun is anything that is ‘hypergolic’. Hypergolic fuels ignite spontaneously when fuel and oxidizer are mixed (a little thought make the importance of this clear as the consequences of dumping a few dozen pounds of fuel and oxidizer together and THEN having them ignite can be unfortunate in a boom! sort of way). Another connection near to this one was the hop to Derek Lowe’s medchem blog with particular attention to his things I won’t work with articles (which have been few and far between of late 🙁 ). The items in these articles are more diverse than the stuff in ignition, but no less interesting…

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