by John Carter
Molina said the decrease with altitude in the earth's gravitational pull will be a favorable factor in building rockets to reach even greater heights. His reckoning is that this pull is one-tenth less 200 miles up than at the earth's surface, and that it decreases proportionately with altitude.
Soon after, Malina and the group abandoned step rockets altogether. The AP item spawned several more newspaper articles about the group's work, but Malina lamented all the fuss, as is evidenced by the conspicuous absence of rocket travel from the above quote. (The public still identified rockets with trips to the moon.) Malina did not appear in subsequent newspaper articles, but Parsons and Forman readily did, and were photographed repeatedly. They clearly saw this exposure as a way to gain attention—and perhaps some funding.
Parsons also seemed to enjoy the status his work brought and sometimes exaggerated his title when presenting himself to others. He would call himself “Engineer,” a false title since he held no degree, though he actually had a more practical knowledge of explosives than many engineers who did have degrees. The occupations listed for Parsons in the Pasadena city directories simply came from whatever the homeowner told the compiler of the directories. Parsons started out calling himself a “chemist,” and later on calling himself a “research assistant” at Caltech. A letter of recommendation he wrote for Robert Droz bears the signature block, “Project Engineer, Aeronautics Department.” Two GALCIT organizational charts in the JPL archives do make one thing clear: Parsons was the sole individual in charge of the solid fuel program.
May 1938 found Parsons in the courtroom, named by Caltech as their best explosives expert when the prosecutor of a murder trial contacted the institute. The case for which he served as an expert witness was a murder by car bomb. The trial lasted months and is well-documented in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express. Parsons is mentioned in articles on May 6 and May 10, the latter of which has a photo of him.
The defendants in the case were Captain Earle E. Kynette and his two aides, Lieutenants Roy Allen and Fred Browne of the Los Angeles city police's “spy squad” who were accused of planting a pipe bomb in the car of another officer, Harry Raymond. Raymond was a vice investigator; and apparently the three crooked cops thought he was getting too close for comfort. When Raymond stepped on the starter switch, the bomb exploded, killing him. The murder took place on January 14 of that year.
After surveying the available evidence, Parsons prepared a mockup of the bomb for the jury to see. In the Los Angeles Herald and Express May 10 photo, Parsons is seen displaying his mockup to prosecutor Gene Williams. It is a six-inch piece of pipe, three inches in diameter, capped at both ends, with a pair of wires leading to it. Parsons stated that the original contained a pound of pressed powder and “jagged bits of metal.” The bomb destroyed both the victim's car and the garage it was parked in.
After leaving the courtroom on May 6 Parsons went to the desert near Lancaster with a working model of the alleged pipe bomb, destroying an old car with it. Despite intense cross-examination, Parsons remained firm in his testimony that the bomb contained smokeless powder and not some other explosive. The Los Angeles Times speaks highly of him in this regard. He could not be shaken, remarkable for a 23-year-old.
JPL reconstructs the GALCIT project's organizational chart of 1941 showing John Parsons in charge of its solid fuel program.
Several police officers refused to testify against their former colleagues during the course of the lengthy trial, but the three were convicted nonetheless. A bomb threat was called in on the day of Parsons’ testimony, the caller stating, “I am a friend of Kynette and a member of the police force, and you tell [special prosecutor] Joe Fainer if he doesn't lay off Kynette I'll bomb him the way Harry Raymond was bombed.” Fainer was not bombed, but this incident may have had something to do with Parsons’ death 14 years later.
The same month of the trial, May 1938, a technical article aimed at rocketeers appeared in Astronautics: Journal of the American Rocket Society, issue 41. Parsons was not mentioned. On July 15, the morning edition of the Pasadena Star-News printed a more sensational article, in which Parsons and Forman appear in a large photograph, Parsons in a dark suit, Forman in a cream-colored jacket with matching driver's cap. Forman smokes thoughtfully as both men lean on their elbows in front of their launch apparatus. A small, single-stage model rocket hovers just overhead—obviously inserted into the photo by means of double-exposure. The article gives some highlights of the pair's work in the Arroyo Seco. By this time Tsien had taken leave from the group, later returning to work on Rocket Project No. 1 at Caltech, while Parsons and the others worked at GALCIT in the arroyo.
The Los Angeles Examiner ran its own account of work in the arroyo. The article doesn't vary from the Pasadena Star-News article, except for having a different photo. This L.A. Examiner photo is one of the best early photos of Parsons and Forman around. Unlike the Pasadena photo, it was actually taken indoors. The caption could have read “Gentlemen Rocketeers.” Both men wore dark jackets and ties, with hair slicked back and mustaches well-trimmed. Parsons stands on the left, holding a multi-stage rocket, while Forman kneels on the right, inspecting the spring-operated testing device.
Unlike Parsons, Malina did not appreciate publicity, feeling that the group hadn't accomplished anything worth publicizing. Nearly a year elapsed before Malina said anything more about Parsons in letters home, and one can almost feel the tension as the “good intelligent friends” drifted apart. Malina's letters were now full of references to roommate and fellow doctorate candidate Martin Summerfield. On October 24, 1938, Malina wrote, “A ‘big shot’ from the Army Ordnance division was here today. He told of the army's experience with rockets and thought there was little possibility of using them for military purposes. I silently rejoiced, however Parsons, who is about broke, was not so happy about it, as he hoped to get some funds for research from the army.”
This source of funding became another contentious point, as Malina was against all military applications of his work. He was interested in civilian innovations only—namely, scientific applications that would benefit mankind, as well as possibly (eventually) an improved means of travel. Parsons was interested in the end result—working rockets—and wasn't concerned about how he got there. As it turned out, both Malina and the “big shot” were wrong—there were military applications for rockets just around the corner.
At one point Malina was invited to visit Ruben Fleet, President of the Consolidated Aircraft Company in San Diego, who gave Malina a tour and asked him about the possibility of rocket-assisted takeoffs of “big, heavy planes.” Malina left, intrigued, but nothing came of the meeting until three years later, after Parsons had spent some more time experimenting. In fact, seaplanes were not fitted with JATOs until 1943 and they were liquid-fueled.
Malina also prepared a scientific paper for a contest in France that was sponsored by André Louis Hirsch, a banker with an above-average interest in rocketry. The contest was to award a cash prize to the best paper on current issues in the field. Malina won, but because of the war he did not learn of his prize until 1946—far too late for the winnings to help the project. Tsien appears to have helped Malina with the award-winning paper, though it bore Malina's name solely as author.
At this time, an interesting reversal of responsibility is recorded in Malina's letters home, in which he had written that Parsons and Forman “disappear for weeks or months sometimes with me trying to keep the project alive. They were working for the powder companies and testing their own rockets during these times.” Malina took other time-consuming jobs, including wind-tunnel studies and a soil conservation project. Such outside endeavors increased tension in the group. Four months later, in a letter dated February 19, 1939, Malina wrote, “Parsons is doing some experiments with powder and is disgusted with me for not putting more time in to the research.” The results of the powder experiments were written up by Parsons, who shared a byline with Forman in issue 43 of Astro
nautics. Certainly this byline was merely a courtesy, as the article is obviously Parsons’ work.
The title of the article is “Experiments with Powder Motors for Rocket Propulsion by Successive Impulses.” Like Parsons’ previous paper, it was classified during the war, though the article was presumably still in circulation. The article begins with an editorial comment from the publisher to the effect that “the American Rocket Society believes the liquid fuel rocket motor has very definitely proven its superiority over powder motors…” This assertion would be proven wrong in two years’ time.
The article, the technical analysis of which leaves little doubt that Parsons was the author, starts with a discussion of Goddard's work from 1919 forward and includes Goddard's early results with rockets using black powder as a fuel, a method by which he was able to achieve altitudes of 8000 feet, i.e., a mile-and-a-half up. Parsons then goes into a detailed explanation of his own test apparatus, including very exact specifications used to construct his rocket motors. Hercules black powder alone was used in the first series of tests, and different results were obtained for different degrees of compression (i.e., how densely the powder was packed into the rocket). Other powders were used in the remaining experiments, including smokeless varieties, and different types of wads were used at the bottom to hold the fuel in. Most charges were ignited by an electric wire run through this wadding and into the fuel source.
Parsons concludes the article with the assertion that powder was indeed efficient enough to pursue further. Indeed, he and Forman got rockets to reach velocities of 7150 feet per second (4875 miles per hour) in this series of tests, which approached what Goddard had achieved 20 years earlier. Parsons said they were working on an erosion-resistant insert of special steel as well as a satisfactory method of measuring chamber pressures. Erosion was often a problem with the throat nozzle—the part of the rocket from which the burning fuel leaves the rocket and pushes it up. In the article, Parsons thanked Malina, Tsien, a Mr. Spade of the Ludlum Steel Company, and a Mr. Henry N. Marsh of the Hercules Powder Company, which was Parsons’ original employer from 1932. At the time the article was written, Parsons was employed by Halifax Explosives.
Around this time some money finally came through, and the school received a $10,000 grant to work on solid-fuel rockets, based on the group's progress. About this time, Fritz Zwicky, who had taken graduate courses under Einstein, scolded Malina for thinking that a rocket could ever fly in space, asking how the exhaust could push against a vacuum. What Zwicky didn't realize was that displacement of mass was all that was needed. On March 13 Malina wrote, “Parsons and Forman are to work full time and earn enough money to afford smoking ready-rolled cigarettes. Parsons’ wife [Helen] will be happy that she is not the only breadwinner in the family.” Parsons’ good friend Rypinski related much the same thing, that Helen would “cry on his shoulder” that Parsons would only save his money for rockets, and not spend it on her.
This stroke of financial luck was the result of a visit by H.H. “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Corps. Arnold was a sharp individual who would work with von Kármán for many years after the war, and always on the lookout for some new scientific development to be used for military applications. Unlike the previous military “big shot” who visited, Arnold was intrigued by the possible uses for rockets. Ed Forman, for instance, recalled Arnold's suggestion that rockets might help airplanes take off while being as much as 50% over payload.
Arnold had worked with von Kármán before. Though Army Ordnance was against exploring the possibilities of rockets, Hap was less conventional, and had taken Malina and von Kármán to Washington the year previously on an unrelated matter. He knew talent when he saw it and convinced the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Air Corps Research to fund the grant. Von Kármán and Robert Millikan were both members of the committee, which made Arnold's job much easier. There were actually several aeronautics projects being funded at this time, but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) avoided the rocket project, opting to working on the problem of deicing aircraft windshields. “Kármán can take the Buck Rogers job” said the head of their aeronautics department. Kármán was glad he did and later called the project “one of the most fascinating periods of my career.”
On April 18, 1939, a proposal was submitted to the Board of Directors at Caltech entitled, “Proposal for a Jet Propulsion Experimental Station at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.” The draft I have seen has the title “Chairman, Subcommittee for Jet Propulsion Research” below the signature block. Presumably this “Chairman” was von Kármán, though the work is probably Malina's. Two pages of summary are followed by an $80,000 cost estimate for the initial annual budget, with a footnote explaining that the figure does not include the cost for constructing the facility itself.
As to the construction, Forman later told a Lockheed company newsletter that he made an arrangement with a local bulldozer operator who worked for the city to grade the experimental station arena in the Arroyo Seco. The group itself fabricated the buildings from timbers and other items found in the arroyo, a “complex” that was a far cry from the 6000-employee facility JPL of today. In his memoir, von Kármán says he originally obtained the land, countering Forman's similar, and perhaps exaggerated, claim.
In the following months, Parsons and Forman are mentioned in passing in several Malina letters, and both earn a longer mention in his letter of August 21 when a large explosion hit the building they were working in on campus. The explosion occurred at 8:20 in the morning, “too early for Parsons and Forman to be at work,” causing $10,000 in damage to the building—the entire value of the grant. The explosion caused an unrecognizable film to deposit itself on everything in the building, and when Parsons and Forman finally arrived, the Caltech staff were waiting for them with cleaning rags, expecting the two to clean it up. As had happened after the explosion of 1937, the group was soon working back in the arroyo.
On October 21, Parsons and Forman received invitations to a staff dinner at the Athenaeum, but old, social prejudices arose when they presented themselves at the door. “You two aren't Caltech staff. You're from town,” they were told by the overzealous doorman, who wouldn't let them in despite their invitations. About this time Malina arrived and convinced the man the pair should be let in just this once, to save face for Caltech, claiming he would ensure that the mistake of inviting them would not be made again. The doorman was swayed, and the two were finally allowed to enter.
On November 26, 1939, the magazine supplement to the Los Angeles Sunday Times ran an article on Parsons, Forman and Malina featuring a photograph of the first two, stating that the three “are tired of explaining they are not trying to build a rocket ship for initiation of the first airline tours to the moon.” Their goal, the article said, was the exploration of the properties of near space. No mention of Hap Arnold's project was made, but other scientists’ ideas on accomplishing this exploratory feat were also discussed. The accompanying photo shows Forman at the controls of a liquid fuel test pit, which replaced the earlier open-air tests, as well as the old-fashioned sandbags still in heavy use. In the photo Parsons stands behind Forman, taking notes. Later he had the idea of photographing the gauges rather than trying to write everything down during the short-duration burns, a policy that made it much easier to document the actual readings.
Around this time Parsons made an interesting discovery in Robert Rypinski's library, a discovery that would change the direction of Parsons’ personal life as much as Bollay's lecture changed the direction of his professional life. When Parsons rummaged through Rypinski's library he found a copy of Aleister Crowley's Konx Om Pax, published in 1907, which Rypinski had bought years earlier. The discovery, Rypinski said, was to Parsons “like real water to a thirsty man.” Rypinksi himself never had figured out the rather dense book, so he gave it to Parsons, who soon told him he had entered into correspondence with its author.
Although recorded in several places, including Nat Freedland's The Occult Explosion and Sybil Leek's Diary of a Witch, the story is untrue that Crowley had once been in Pasadena long enough to start a lodge for his mystical order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). In reality, Crowley did make a brief stopover in Los Angeles in 1915—and couldn't wait to leave. Not until 20 years later would there be an official representative of the OTO in the area, namely Wilfred Talbot Smith, at whose home Parsons was to present himself shortly after his discovery of Crowley. It seems more than coincidental that the only lodge of the OTO was located within a few miles of Parsons’ home.
Some familiarity with the magus Crowley (1875–1947) will be assumed throughout the remainder of this book, though I will elaborate on the elements of his work that have a direct bearing upon the work of John Parsons. Readers wishing to learn about Crowley are referred to the works listed in the bibliography; however, a satisfactory biography of the powerful and enigmatic Crowley remains to be published.
Crowley's Los Angeles representative, Smith, was from Tonbridge, Kent, about 20 miles southeast of London. He started his magical career as a member of the original Agape Lodge in Vancouver, British Columbia—the first North American lodge of the OTO—of which “Frater Achad” (Charles Stansfeld Jones, 1885–1950) was the founder. Smith had met Crowley at the Agape Lodge in 1915, during the latter's second American tour, and had soon risen to a position of greater authority in the Lodge, as Achad (Hebrew for “Unity”) fell into disfavor with Crowley and was eventually expelled for a variety of heresies. Smith moved to Los Angeles in 1930, and, upon his arrival, began working on reopening the Agape Lodge, sometimes referred to as Agape Lodge #2.
Smith's colleague was Regina Kahl, who served as his High Priestess of the Gnostic Mass. The two are said to have run the Agape Lodge very strictly, almost tyrannically. Separate photos of Kahl and Smith are reproduced in Crowley's OTO publication, The Equinox, vol. III, no. 10.
