The story of Wernher von Braun and his reinvention as a prominent figure in the American space program is very well-known among the public. However, few are aware that, years before the Peenemünde team arrived, the US had its own homegrown rocket pioneers, the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who were referred to as the "Suicide Squad" for their at times reckless experiments. This was a group of very odd individuals who nonetheless were the true founders of the American space program, and I think they deserve to be honored in KSA.
The story begins in 1934, when two self-taught rocket enthusiasts from Pasadena, Jack Parsons (yes, that one) and Ed Forman, approached Frank Joseph Malina - a PhD student in aeronautics under Professor Theodore von Karman at Caltech - with a proposal to research rocketry. von Karman approved the project as Malina's doctoral thesis, and the three soon began work, first studying aspects of rocket propulsion theoretically before moving on to practical experiments with different propellants. These experiments were prone to explosive failure, and the trio soon earned the nickname "Suicide Squad." Eventually, they were forced off campus entirely, having to set up shop at the nearby Arroyo Seco site which JPL rests on today. This research was on a shoestring budget, with the Suicide Squad having to jerry-rig experimental setups out of whatever scrap they could find.
Malina's dissertation experiments lasted until 1938. However, by that time the US Army Air Forces had taken notice of his work due to the impending war in Europe and in 1939 offered him a $10,000 grant to continue. That funding would rapidly increase with the outbreak of WW2, and Malina found himself managing an entire makeshift research laboratory out in Arroyo Seco - the incipient Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Hundreds more were brought onto the project, including Malina's best friend and future Princeton aeronautics professor Martin Summerfield and Qian Xuesen, the future founder of China's space program. Despite initiating a research project to develop the first American ballistic missile in 1943, the JPL never was given the resources to build a functioning counterpart to the V2 by the end of the war - their work was mainly for jet-assisted takeoff units for aircraft. However, the effort lead to the first castable and stably-burning solid rocket propellants by Jack Parsons and the first hypergolic propellant combination, RFNA/aniline, by Martin Summerfield. It was only after the war ended that things would get interesting.
The Suicide Squad were an odd bunch, to say the least. Jack Parsons is infamous for his interest in the occult - he was a practicing Thelemite and associate of L. Ron Hubbard. However, what is less known is that Malina and Summerfield were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, USA, existing in the same Party unit as Frank Oppenheimer! Malina had become disenchanted with capitalism due to the Great Depression and found Marxism's desire to apply the scientific method to society appealing. He was very averse to war and only reluctantly worked on military projects out of a desire to fight fascism, having begun his rocket research in order to develop sounding rockets for scientific research, and after he saw the US' intention to develop nuclear-tipped missiles and import German rocket scientists post-war, he decided he had enough. He resigned as Director of JPL in 1946 and moved to Paris to work for UNESCO - just escaping the outbreak of the Second Red Scare. His associates were not so lucky - Xuesen would be placed under house arrest and deported to China in the 50s, and another Communist associate, Sidney Weinbaum, was imprisoned for perjury. It is for this reason that few people are aware of him.
In 1952, the Truman administration imposed a loyalty review on American employees of international organizations, and in response Malina resigned from UNESCO and became a professional artist, helping pioneer the lumidyne technique and founding Leonardo, a trade journal exploring the intersection of science and art. After the beginning of the Space Race, he founded the International Astronautical Federation and the Acta Astronautica journal in order to foster peaceful cooperation for space exploration in the midst of the Cold War. Up until his death, he would write to NASA in order to correct the record on the start of the American space program, which did not begin with Von Braun (a figure Malina always despised).
If you want to read more about the story of Malina and the "Suicide Squad," there's a fantastic book called Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket. There's also this documentary video from JPL which has a summarized version:
And yes, I can see kittenified versions of their names:
- Frank (or Joe) Mewlina
- Jack Purrsons (or Parsnip)
- Ed Furman
Upvote
0
