Oct 15 2012

Back in the mines…

Rosemary

Lovely weekend, with a lovely hike with my lovely pals!   What could be finer?

But, no time to chit-chat; back to the mines of mystery…

But first to punch in with my now-traditional random quote:

 

“Knapp went on about the explosiveness of lox[liquid oxygen], the common oxidizer in rocket engines: ‘A little grease can set off lox: some people believe even fingerprints are enough to set it off.’

“Knapp was going on about the celebrated case of the coffee can at Edwards, during the X-1 program, when the Bell project engineer, Wendel Moore, took a piece of the gasket material, the infamous ulmer leather, out for a test.  He filled a coffee can with lox, topped it with a square of the leather, then hit the ensemble with a hammer — and ended up with half the coffee can wrapped around his neck.  Fortunately, he was uninjured.  But he proved the hard way that leather seals were explosive when soaked with the oxidizer.”

— X-15 Diary, The Story of America’s First Space Ship, by Richard Tregaskis, E.P.Dutton & Co, Inc. New York, 1961

rebound for your reading pleasure

one of those cool book covers...

 

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