On 15 Feb, 08:26, "Mike Cawood, HND BIT" wrote:

Isn't getting kids to experiment with explosive materials somewhat
irresponsible, even in those days?

If kids are going to experiment, then hydrogen peroxide is one of the
safer ways to do it. It just can't detonate if it tried and the hazard
goes up with the concentration so it's easy to start small. Until you
get to HTP, the worst hazard is the chemical problem of eye splash,
not the physics of the explosions. The major safety precautions are
just to wear goggles and don't seal it into anything (if you can't
grok those, then autodarwinate). It's _incomparably_ safer to
something like collecting Armstrong's mixture up from scraped caps,
recycling aluminmium mixtures from fireworks or the like.

Also look at the excellent safety record of the early British HTP
rocket program, compared to the US (or US Navy!) liquid fuelled
programs.

Manganese compounds were used in WW2 as the late-war ersatz probelms
started to bite. They weren't efficient enough for the flying rockets,
but they were successful for the bulky and static V1 launch ramps. An
early unsuccessful model of the Me163 engines used it too in a
bipropellant system (Ian Hogg).