“Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don’t mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.”
“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water — with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminium, etc. — because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
“If your propellants flow into the chamber and ignite immediately, you’re in business. But if they flow in, collect in a puddle, and then ignite, you have an explosion which generally demolishes the engine and its immediate surroundings. The accepted euphemism for this sequence of events is a ‘hard start.’”
“Their guess turned out to be right, but one is reminded of E. T. Bell’s remark that the great vice of the Greeks was not sodomy but extrapolation.”
“…a molecule with one reducing (fuel) end and one oxidizing end, separated by a pair of firmly crossed fingers, is an invitation to disaster.”
“I looked around and signaled to my own gang, and we started backing away gently, like so many cats with wet feet.”
“And there is one disconcerting thing about working with a computer — it’s likely to talk back to you. You make some tiny mistake in your FORTRAN language — putting a letter in the wrong column, say, or omitting a comma — and the 360 comes to a screeching halt and prints out rude remarks, like “ILLEGAL FORMAT,” or “UNKNOWN PROBLEM,” or, if the man who wrote the program was really feeling nasty that morning, “WHAT’S THE MATTER STUPID? CAN’T YOU READ?” Everyone who uses a computer frequently has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe.”
Terrorists able to smuggle bombs on an airplane in the form of hypergolic liquids? So it might be possible or is.
“””And there is one disconcerting thing about working with a computer — it’s likely to talk back to you. You make some tiny mistake in your FORTRAN language — putting a letter in the wrong column, say, or omitting a comma — and the 360 comes to a screeching halt and prints out rude remarks, like “ILLEGAL FORMAT,” or “UNKNOWN PROBLEM,” or, if the man who wrote the program was really feeling nasty that morning, “WHAT’S THE MATTER STUPID? CAN’T YOU READ?” Everyone who uses a computer frequently has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe.”””
Touché.
That’s a good book.
One time I wrote a FORTRAN program and I could not for the life of me figure why it wouldn’t compile. Took it to the student instructor and he couldn’t figure it out for the longest. Finally he realized that I had too many spaces leading the code. If I remember correctly you had to have 6 spaces, or maybe it was 7, and then start on the next space. Don’t ask me why I just remember you had to punch in spaces(it was a long time ago). I had one too many and it would just throw up and tell me nothing.
I managed to dodge FORTRAN, but I had to look this up:
On second thought it was one too “few” spaces. Long time ago.
Indeed, the leading 5 + 1 was the bane of novice programmers.
The reason for it was the ability to label each card with a number. One didn’t have to; labels were used for the dreaded “go to” variously conditional branch statements as a necessity, but most of us who wrote much code learned damn quick to get a sequence number somewhere on the card. Lines 73-80 were also used for that, but it was a honkin’ PITA to get to column 73 on a keypunch.
If you doubt the need, consider that one Fortran/assembler program I wrote required enough 2000-card boxes of cards that I had to haul them to the comp center with a wagon. A biggish wagon. Now hit a bump with the wagon…