“The complete, authoritive handbook for safe procedures in design, testing, preperation of fuels and firing of rockets which you can make yourself. Along with Homer Hickam's "Rocket Boys", "Rocket Manual For Amateurs" is the best available look at the post Sputnik amateur rocketry craze that swept the nation in the late 1950s and early 60s.





Like Hickam, I originally made the typical beginner's error of equating rocket propellants with explosives. I started out by opening shotgun shells to get hold of gunpowder. (Hickam opened cherry bombs to extract their flash powder.) Then I progressed on to crude but ultimately effective homemade black powder. In those days, any grade school kid could easily buy saltpeter and sulfur over the counter at any local drug store. (The cashiers had no idea what they were selling us!) It was Brinley's book that likely saved me from having a serious accident as a result of my youthful enthusiasm combined with near total ignorance of what I was doing. Much to my delight, my father brought me home this book from a trip to New York City in 1962. After I read it, I began experimenting with safer propellant mixtures and motor designs. Eventually, by the time I got to my last two years in high school, I was building and launching some fairly respectable amateur rockets.