One of the key foundrers of JPL labs written out of NASA history
Parsons' was a figure who didn't fit into the mould of the Industrial Complex. "Wernher von Braun -- a former Nazi -- was much a much easier fit than Parsons," says Pendle. "A lot of people would be shocked to find out that the space programme was founded by a man who held orgies in his Pasadena mansion."
EARLY CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENTS
Parsons' interest in chemistry stemmed from his teenage years when, inspired by space travel found in science fiction literature, he started amateur rocket experiments with a school friend called Edward Forman. He later studied chemistry and high school and took a holiday job at the Hercules Powder Company, where he got to handle a wide range of explosives.
After school, Parsons was keen to access the rocketry facilities at Caltech but his academic ambitions had been plagued by financial difficulties. He and Forman ended up teaming with a PhD student called Frank Malina to apply for funding from the university to explore rocketry. They didn't reveal their ambition to develop rockets for space exploration as this was, at the time considered to be a science fiction. At the university's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, the trio collaborated on developing rockets in a creative and liberal environment as members of the GALCIT Rocket Research Group.
The group -- which increased in numbers over the next few years -- set about developing a static rocket-motor before moving onto working rockets. The team became known as the "Suicide Squad" on campus because of how dangerous their experiments were, but eventually had success in building a static rocket that could burn for more than a minute.
ESOTERICISM
In the late 1930s, Parsons started to develop an interest in esotericism, attending something called The Gnostic Mass at the Church of Thelema. Parsons came to believe in magic, a force that he felt could be explained through quantum physics, as espoused by Thelema's founder Aleister Crowley.
"He was good with things that went boom -- so au fait with rockets and explosives," says Pendle.
George Pendle
As Parsons' interest in the occult developed, his colleague Malina approached the National Academy of Sciences for funding into "jet propulsion" as a means for developing more nimble aircraft. The team was granted $1,000 (£595 at today's exchange) -- the first government-funded rocketry research group in history. A quarter of the funding had to go towards repairing damage to Caltech buildings caused by the group's experiments and the group was eventually forced to relocate to some iron sheds in the Arroyo Seco canyon, where they were closely watched by the FBI which was keen to make sure that no political extremists were accessing the explosives. It was here that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would be founded.
One of the group's key innovations was developing Jet-Assisted Take Off (JATO) engines for the US Air Corps, with Parsons developing a restricted burning solid rocket fuel that was stable enough to be stored indefinitely. The engine technology and fuel were commercialised through a company called Aerojet, where Parsons became project engineer. Versions of this fuel was eventually used by Nasa in the Space Shuttle as well as in military ballistic missiles.
more: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/23/jpl-jack-parsons
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