Sex and Rockets

by John Carter

  Something else happened that autumn, something that would cure the restlessness and change the direction of Parsons’ life forever. After seeing an article in the Pasadena Evening Post about a lecture given at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech or Caltech), Parsons and pal Ed Forman went to campus to talk to the speaker. The topic was the rocket experiments of the Austrian Eugen Sänger, and the lecture had been given by a graduate student named William Bollay, which is still on file in the JPL archives. Though the speech was written in 1935, it appears to have been presented several times—perhaps as late as 1939. It concludes with speculation on the possibility of “stratospheric passenger carriers,” i.e., “spaceships.”

  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory began in the 1920s and was known as the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (GALCIT). GALCIT started as an aerodynamics research laboratory funded by a member of the famous Guggenheim family and administered by Caltech. In 1926, GALCIT came under the direction of the well-known Hungarian professor Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963).

  Born in Budapest on May 11, 1881, von Kármán was descended from Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, and he often boasted of his ancestor's reputation for having created a golem, “an artificial human being in Hebrew folklore endowed with life.”2 Unmentioned in his autobiography, The Wind and Beyond, the golem appears in several secondary sources. Though not relevant to our discussion of GALCIT, the creation of the golem is a topic we will return to later when we discuss “magical children.”

  After graduating Göttingen University in Germany, von Kármán was awarded a fellowship there, and began to conduct research on aerodynamic drag in one of Europe's first wind tunnels, which he built for this purpose. He later moved to the position of Chair of Aeronautics at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany, where GALCIT's Clark Millikan found him in 1926. Clark Millikan was the son of Caltech president Robert Millikan and the head of the GALCIT lab when he recruited von Kármán away from Aachen.

  Von Kármán's specialty was the new, wide-open field of aeronautics, and he eventually influenced a number of students who went on to great things in their own right. One of his pupils was a graduate student named Frank J. Malina, who was born October 2, 1912 in the small town of Brenham, Texas, northwest of Houston. In 1934, Malina earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M in nearby College Station and was working toward his Ph.D. at Caltech when Parsons and Forman presented themselves to William Bollay at the latter's lecture on Eugen Sänger's rocket experiments. For Malina, von Kármán became a father figure, much like the one Parsons was still seeking.

  Although the older man did not actualize his father fixation, when Parsons was with von Kármán, he knew was in the presence of a great man. In turn, von Kármán called Parsons “a delightful screwball” who “loved to recite pagan poetry to the sky while stamping his feet”—a reference to Aleister Crowley's “Hymn to Pan,” which Parsons loved to recite. At a party at the big house at 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave. where he would eventually live, Parsons stood in a balcony above the gathering and recited the Hymn from memory after being prompted by Andrew Haley, von Kármán's attorney. Aerojet employee Fritz Zwicky related that Parsons invoked Pan, the wild, horned god of fertility, before each rocket test. Parsons was probably not the only one present at such dangerous tests who said a prayer. His heterodoxy notwithstanding, von Kármán wrote in 1958 that Parsons was the third most important person in the development of rocketry in the United States—behind only himself and Frank Malina. Von Kármán praised Parsons’ “rich talent for chemistry,” and perhaps induced by Parsons’ beliefs, von Kármán found it necessary to say he read John Symonds’ The Great Beast, an early, somewhat sensationalistic biography of Aleister Crowley, the infamous “black magician” who exerted so much influence over Parsons.

  After appearing at Bollay's lecture on Sänger, Parsons and Forman used the opportunity to ask Bollay about working at Caltech, where they could get the necessary funds for their experiments with rockets. Though unable to directly help Parsons and Forman, Bollay directed them to Frank Malina. Although Parsons and Forman held no degrees, Malina was able to spot their useful qualities right away. Forman was the expert mechanic while Parsons knew powder explosives backward and forward, even developing the practice of visiting industrial accidents to determine cause of explosions. The two men revealed their love of rocketry and developing ways of making them work. People remember Parsons as the theoretician and Forman as the mechanic, perfectly complementing one another. The pair were an inseparable team and an invaluable component for Malina, who later wrote that Parsons “lacked the discipline of formal training, [but] had an uninhibited fruitful imagination.” The lack of discipline and uninhibited fruitful imagination would naturally spill over into other areas of Parsons’ life.

  Inspired by Parsons’ and Forman's support, Malina prepared a dissertation on rocket propulsion. Targeting Clark Millikan to sponsor his doctorate, Millikan refused, an act that Malina resented from then on. Malina took his project down the Caltech hall to von Kármán, who immediately approved of it and provided his support. Von Kármán was well known for considering what others thought to be too kooky; after all, rockets were still viewed as science fiction by the public. The mere mention of rockets had people thinking of such impossible things as trips to the moon and rarely anything else. Von Kármán's allowed Parsons and Forman to use the lab at GALCIT despite their lack of affiliation with the school.

  Malina later wrote of being influenced by reading Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon at the age of 12, as had Parsons and Forman. (Malina actually read it in Czech, when he lived in that country with his parents for a few years.) All three enjoyed the excitement of trial-and-error experimentation, though Malina also understood the importance of theoretical work, upon which von Kármán always insisted. Since Parsons and Forman were anxious to test rockets to prove brash theories, Malina best served his role by inducing them to work out their theoretical work. When experiments seemed to reach a dead end, Parsons would go to von Kármán, who'd perform a few quick calculations and say something like, “Yes, John, it is possible to achieve success in the direction you are heading, but first you must work out several dependant variables in the field.” Fieldwork was Parsons’ specialty; and for this very reason one is tempted to think von Kármán should have found him more important than Malina in his 1958 list of the most important people in aerospace.

  Malina corresponded heavily with his parents in Texas when he was developing rocketry with Parsons, Forman and von Kármán. Significant portions of these letters are preserved in the JPL archives under the file, “Excerpts from Letters Written Home.” Taken together with the memoirs Malina later wrote, these missives provide valuable insight and a complete picture into the early development of rockets in the United States.

  The first mention of Parsons and Forman in Malina's documents comes on February 14, 1936. By March 30, Malina referred to the pair and himself as the “group.” After reviewing the scant literature on the subject of rockets, the group decided that their first goal would be to develop a working motor. Stationary tests of motors, rather than launching test rockets, was the first priority. Other experimenters bypassed this important step, failing as a result. Von Kármán persuaded GALCIT to lease three acres of land from the city of Pasadena in the area known as the Arroyo Seco, which exists in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, just above the dam called Devil's Gate. The acreage was the site of the new group's experiments. Today, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is situated there.

  The great experiment started slowly. Malina writes on April 5 that Parsons and Forman take jobs at a powder company. Presumably they returned to Halifax. Even though rockets were their passion, there was no money in it—yet. On April 13, Malina wrote that he hadn't seen either of them for at least several days; Parsons finally phoned Malina on May 24, telling him that he almost had a rocket motor completed.

  A mo
nth later, on June 18, Malina writes of Parsons testing with powder, a reference to a solid fuel called “ballistite,” which is made by inserting a compressed black powder into the rocket motor so it will burn more slowly and evenly. The compression is accomplished by heating smokeless powder at first, then extruding it under pressure into long thin rods. Smokeless powder is a “double-base propellant” consisting of nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose, a formula known since the time of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. This propellant was the fuel that eventually powered bazooka rockets and was not much different from the wax and aluminum used by Parsons and Forman in 1932. Ballistite was used in some of their tests prior to their work with GALCIT.

  The work took off rapidly once the testing started. On June 29, Malina wrote, “Parsons and I drove all over Los Angeles—looking for high pressure tanks and meters. Didn't have any luck. Two instruments we need costs $60 a piece and we are trying to find them second hand. I am convinced it is a hopeless task. Will have to approach Kármán.” The group's lack of funds reflects that GALCIT wasn't anxious to bankroll a project they felt was far-fetched. Malina approached Professor Irving P. Krick, who made a lot of money forecasting weather for movie studios. Though intrigued by the possibilities, Krick did not contribute. Parsons, Forman, and Malina were required to fund the project on their own.

  On July 18, Malina wrote, “The early part of this week Jack Parsons and I covered much of Los Angeles looking for equipment. Our next lead points to Long Beach. Parsons is planning to start manufacturing explosives with another fellow [Forman]. Up to the present time he has been working for an explosives concern. Hope they make a go of it. I have found in Parsons and his wife [Helen] a pair of good intelligent friends.” “Hope they make a go of it” almost sounds defeatist, but Malina persisted.

  In the summer of 1936, Malina took the trouble to visit Robert Goddard (1882–1945) in Roswell, New Mexico. Goddard left Connecticut for Roswell years earlier to work on his own rocket project, about which he was very secretive. Goddard actually worked in Pasadena for a while during World War I, in the very Arroyo Seco where Parsons, Malina, and Forman were laboring. Malina visited Goddard to get ideas for his own research and to perhaps find a new position working for Goddard—who had funding—rather than at the cheap domain of Caltech.

  At the invitation of Harry Guggenheim and von Kármán, who were interested in recruiting him, Goddard visited Caltech. Unwilling to leave Roswell, Goddard requested that Caltech send Malina to Roswell to visit his facility, which Malina did in September.

  During Malina's visit, Goddard was polite on the surface, but displayed obvious tension. As Goddard showed him around, Malina realized his host didn't show anything of value. Malina knew right away that Goddard wanted another hand to do the hard work rather than a co-researcher. Malina returned to California disappointed. Goddard later refused a position at Caltech offered by Clark Millikan, probably understanding he would just be another scientist on a large campus, rather than the head of his own program. In his memoirs, von Kármán made some rather negative comments about Goddard's research suffering from self-imposed isolation.

  Back at Caltech, “the group” was joined by three others: Apollo M.O. Smith (called “Amo” by his friends), Carlos C. Wood, and Rudolph Schott, bringing the total to six. Smith was a Caltech student like Malina, and regarded an eccentric since he constantly wore a pith helmet he modified by placing a small cooling fan on top. Wood and Schott were just a couple of guys from town who walked out to the test site and offered their assistance. Schott's red pickup truck became the group's standard means of transporting test apparatus. There was also associated with the group for a while an individual named Rockefeller (“Rocky”), but little mention of him exists in the records. Someone operated a motion picture camera during some of the tests; Rocky may well have been the camera operator.

  In September, 1936, Malina got a new roommate: Martin Summerfield (1916–1996), a graduate student interested in rockets who arrived at Caltech from Brooklyn College in New York. Summerfield went on and made great advances in the field of liquid propellants; the Summerfield Burning Rate Law is named after him. Summerfield became fast friends with Malina, as the two had many things in common that Malina did not share with Parsons. Both Summerfield and Malina were graduate students, well-versed in theory, while Parsons held no degree and was entirely self-trained. A week after Summerfield moved in, Malina learned that he shared birthdays with Parsons, one of the last discoveries they would enjoy together as friends.

  * * *

  1. Ley helped popularize a number of scientific miscellany such as dinosaur survivals, space travel, and Atlantis. He had a long-running column in Galaxy Magazine. He also seems to be the one who informed the rest of the world of the Nazis’ preoccupation with the occult. His books are relatively easy to find in used bookstores.

  2. Webster's.

  two

  Parsons at Caltech: 1936–1939

  Parsons at left, and Ed Forman.

  Halloween of 1936 produced the event which JPL still refers to as its birth. From Malina's letters, one gets the impression that this important date meant little except another series of tests ending in failure. Even if the day signified failure to Frank Malina, a photographer was present to get shots of Rudolph Schott, Amo Smith, Malina, Ed Forman, and John Parsons posing with testing apparatus. Though the photo is referred to by JPL staff as “the Nativity Scene,” Carlos Wood, one of the researchers, failed to attend the apparently momentous gathering.

  Once a year, on JPL's Open House for the public, the Nativity Scene is recreated with mannequins just behind the JPL Visitors’ Center. For the 50th anniversary in 1986, JPL contemplated hiring live actors to portray the five founders. This event never materialized, but the Parsons mannequin and four others are stored at JPL today, stored for the next Open House when they'll be put on display. It seems ironic that this Nativity Scene took place on Halloween in 1936, containing the likeness of a man who signed an oath stating he was “the Antichrist.” Photographs of the original scene and the JPL recreation are reproduced in the photo section of this volume. (It should be pointed out that the Nativity Scene celebrates the test of liquid fuel, though the group worked with both solid and liquid fuel at this time.)

  The day after the Nativity Scene, an incident occurred that Malina thought significant to report: One of the fuel hoses pulled free, and the fuel spilling out the end ignited. The hose started twisting and turning, a flaming serpent from which they all ran for their lives. After they composed themselves, the group regretted not capturing the moment on film. Later tests fared somewhat better, but the group still measured success in how many seconds the rocket fired. By January 16, 1937, they were up to 44 seconds.

  The test apparatus at Arroyo Seco was built with borrowed tanks and hoses, Forman later recalled. He machined the casing for the chamber himself and stated, “It was a hand-to-mouth operation where you rented machine time for $2 an hour and did the work yourself, in a day when wages were 25 cents an hour.” That's half a day's wages for one hour of shop time. Forman's skill in this precise field is what gave him his excellent reputation as a mechanic. He continued to head the GALCIT/JPL mechanics department for as long as he stayed with the group.

  The original schematic for the Nativity Scene test, is drawn on tracing paper by Malina, who signed both his and Parsons’ names at the bottom. The schematics show oxygen flowing from one side, with methyl alcohol (the fuel) and nitrogen flowing from the other side. Water cooled the rocket during the burn. Thrust pushed down a spring that measured force. The deflection of the spring measured the force applied to it. A small diamond tip on the apparatus scratched a glass plate to mark the furthest point of deflection. The rocket and mount were protected by sandbags, with the tanks (and the experimenters) well away from it.

  Five pages of Parsons’ handwritten notes, which cover the period November 15, 1936 to January 17, 1937, begin:

  The research is conducted with th
e view of acertaing [sic] the aplication [sic] of the rocket to altitude exploration and other fields, the properties of various fuels and of metals at high temperatures. Rockets to be investigated are solid fuel rockets, utilizing explosives or combustibles and liquid rockets employing liquid explosives or liquid or gaseous oxygen and various combustibles.

  Different motors and materials will be tried together with various methods of fuel injection. Relevant previous data will be compiled, together with records of all tests + calculations.

  Schematic diagram of test setup for GALCIT rocket research drawn by Frank Malina in August, 1936.

  Data from the first test—the actual Nativity Scene—are missing. The second test on November 15 employed methyl alcohol at various pressures as a fuel, ignited by a remote battery. All three trials on that second test day ended in failure. In his notes, Parsons remarked that he should switch from rubber tubing to copper tubing to prevent the tubing from burning up during future tests.

  A third test, on November 28, yielded four burns of various duration, the best of which was 20 seconds. Parsons’ notes outline the various materials used in these tests, as well as their procurement sources, as well as a record of the test taken January 16, 1937. Obviously these field notes are incomplete. The long periods of time between each test are due to von Kármán's insistence that the group analyze each burn before they start another.