Rocketry Planet

Chapter 1 Chapter 3 Chapter 5 Chapter 7 Chapter 9   Chapter 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 6 Chapter 8 Chapter 10 Appendix

Captain Bertrand R. Brinley's 1960 book, Rocket Manual for Amateurs, long out of print but still highly sought after, was a book that introduced a generation of America's hobbyists to the thrill of amateur rocketry. His book covered all aspects of rocket design, propulsion, advanced design concepts, flight instrumentation, even launch site layout and data acquisition and evaluation.

When this book was found on the Internet, it had been broken into individual chapters, because the book is over 380 pages — the single-file version Adobe PDF is over 275MB, while the individual chapters are in the 10MB-45MB range each. If you want the single file version, it is recommended that you visit the download site and save it to your local system, as waiting for it to open in your browser will probably result in the session timing out.

To save the full-size version of the book, click here and follow the instructions to save the file to your local system. You will need Adobe Reader to view the article. If you do not have Adobe Reader, a copy may be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/.

Part of the challenge we face in the hobby is the archival and preservation of these old sources of information useful to our hobby. Adobe PDF format makes a great medium for the collection and storage of these types of documents because of its portability and cross-platform approach.

If you have something you'd like to share with the readers, send email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  with details on the document you have to share. Previous submissions have consisted of submitting magazines or documents in whole, which were be returned upon completion of the scanning process. While this approach is still acceptable, the preference is toward user-generated submissions scanned by the users themselves.

Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

This is sweet. I have always wanted to read this and now I can.

Thanks,

Mark

markkoelsch on 03-01-2009 10:03 PM

#2 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Quote:

This is sweet. I have always wanted to read this and now I can.

Thanks,

Mark

Same here.

bguff on 03-01-2009 11:13 PM

#3 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Wow, The good old days. Lot's of good information in this one. More info. on Zinc Sulfur then I will ever use.

Bayourat on 03-02-2009 12:05 AM

#4 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Even though it was wrote in 1960, that's a great Forword in Chapter 1 by Mr. Willey Ley. It's just sad we still face similar veiws from some Govt. officials today, 50 years later.

Scott

SmokinJoe on 03-02-2009 02:22 AM

#5 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Really nice...

I printed out the Ajax document you have here also. Have been binding them in some extra 1 inchers I have sitting around, making a nice little research library for the cost of ink and paper.

New Ocean on 03-02-2009 11:16 AM

#6 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

OK. The paraffin-filled cigar tube rocket Brinley advertised at ~500 feet went 1/10 that and tumbled. The big hulking Zn/S monstrosities were well out of reach, and are throwbacks today.

Brinley didn’t really know anything about rocket engineering, and was prone to hanging formulas up like salamis. Oh yeah… and everything he told you to do he told you never to do. (e.g.; use of powdered metals.)

With all the inadequacies, I have a deep and abiding affection for this book. It got me away from CO2 cartridge bombs and got me making CO2 cartridge rockets – loaded with Zn/S and/or caramel candy propellant. That was a small but very significant step up, and it could well have saved my little 12-year-old butt.

BTW, My 11-year-old still enjoys The Mad Scientists’ Club.

LarryC on 03-02-2009 11:19 AM

#7 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Be warned - if you use the provided link to download the entire book, each and every page has "Created by MagicTech" and the website pasted on top. Makes it a *little* tough to read.

Len_Lekx on 03-03-2009 09:30 PM

#8 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

I was unaware of that. That's a lot of bandwidth, but I guess I'll have to suck it up. If that happened to anyone else, let me know and I'll send you another link.

ddmobley on 03-03-2009 10:06 PM

#9 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Quote:

It got me away from CO2 cartridge bombs and got me making CO2 cartridge rockets – loaded with Zn/S and/or caramel candy propellant.

Me too! I still can't believe that I got my mom to drive me to the chemical supply store to buy the Zn/S for my CO2 cartridge rockets. They were actually not more than mortars when tubed launched :-o

This book does bring back memories, I wonder where my original copy went...?

Stu

StuBarrett on 03-28-2009 05:17 PM

#10 Re: Article: From the Archive: Brinley’s Rocket Manual for Amateurs

Can someone stick all the chapters.pdf files into a .rar file and put it on rapid share or something (if they have them all downloaded), that website is slow.

edit: didn't know it was already on mega upload

Chrisn on 03-28-2009 05:41 PM

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