Sex and Rockets

by John Carter

  Subsequently Woodman died, and in 1897 Westcott stepped down. Mathers began claiming to have made contact with three of the Secret Chiefs, a doubtful assertion. Mathers also soon started to work on his greatest achievement, the translation of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, which he had found in manuscript in a Paris library, the Bibliotheque l'Arsenal. This document explains how one may attain to the “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.”

  Crowley was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn on November 18, 1898, at the age of 23. This was his first initiation, and he took it with all seriousness. Many famous writers were also members of the Golden Dawn: Arthur Edward Waite, William Butler Yeats, and Arthur Machen, to name a few. Oscar Wilde's wife Constance was a member, as was Yeats’ mistress Florence Farr, an actress who was also the mistress of George Bernard Shaw.

  The degree system of the Golden Dawn was later adapted by Crowley for the A∴A∴ and consisted of three different schools or orders: the grades 1 through 4 in the Order of the Golden Dawn proper; the grades 5 through 7 in the Order of the Rosy Cross (a Rosicrucian reference); and the grades 8 through 10 in the Order of the Silver Star.

  The grades from 0 to 10 respectively are:

  Probationer 0°=0▫

  Neophyte 1°=10▫

  Zelator 2°=9▫

  Practicus 3°=8▫

  Philosophus 4°=7▫

  Adeptus Minor 5°=6▫

  Adeptus Major 6°=5▫

  Adeptus Exemptus 7°=4▫

  Magister Templi 8°=3▫

  Magus 9°=2▫

  Ipsissimus 10°=1▫

  Crowley advanced through the lower grades promptly, and was overall quite pleased with the Order, becoming an “adept,” as he moved from the lower grades into the Order of the Rosy Cross.

  The idea of the progression through grades in the Golden Dawn was seen more as a teaching tool, somewhat like the Scottish Rite degrees of the Freemasons. A broad, religious order modeled after the Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn, and subsequently Crowley's A∴A∴, are designed to bring the student to full spiritual potential in all areas.

  The OTO, on the other hand, was conceived as a specialized rite to convey the Key that Kellner had discovered in the East. It then grew into a quasi-masonic initiating body, though the lower grades were initially granted honorarily to Masons in good standing with other lodges, and would subsequently be “de-masonized” by Crowley. Unlike the OTO, the focus of the Golden Dawn was not sexual in nature, although Crowley later used sex magic for the purposes of his own continued self-initiation.

  As early as 1899, there was already dissent in the Golden Dawn, and in 1900 Arthur E. Waite left to found his own order. Another member broke away later to form the Stella Matutina (“Morning Star”). In addition, Mathers had been caught in his lie with Westcott regarding the existence of the Germans, and all the inner turmoil broke up the remaining order quite quickly, a development Crowley attributed to occult forces coming down on Mathers in retribution for his having publishing the Abramelin book. The other members were angry for Mathers having initiated Crowley into the 5° = 6▫ degree, Adeptus Minor, for a variety of reasons. The two had to left the country to do this initiation, traveling to Mathers’ home in Paris, where Mathers conferred the grade upon Crowley, during January 1900.

  Crowley initially supported Mathers but could not do so forever, as Mathers slid further and further into madness. A lawsuit ensued, and Mathers declared in court that he was one of the mysterious “Secret Chiefs,” an affair Crowley parodied quite humorously. The parody is reproduced in The Aleister Crowley Scrapbook by Sandy Robertson.

  Crowley pursued his Golden Dawn work independently, later admitting other members under the aegis of the A∴A∴, but he would eventually openly claim all of the 10 degrees of the Order.

  It was into this strange, esoteric and occult world that John Parsons stepped that fateful day when he received from Rypinski his first Crowley composition. This enigmatic fusion of “sex and rockets” was to prove a fascinating development in the history of the aerospace industry in America.

  * * *

  3. Some sources say it was 1913, which means there is a discrepancy in Crowley's account. Perhaps Reuss saw the book while it was still in manuscript form.

  four

  Parsons’ Double Life: 1940–1942

  The Parsons invention, the solid fuel JATO cannister, now displayed at the Smithsonian.

  In 1940, the editor of Astronautics magazine compiled quotes from famous people under the heading “What They Think About Rockets,” a few of which are worth excerpting here, as they indicate that, like John Parsons, even some of the “big thinkers” were looking to the stars. For example, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. C.G. Abbot, stated:

  A few hundred thousand dollars invested today in the scientific development of rockets would pay the nation dividends amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in the next two decades.

  World-renowned pilot Charles Lindbergh opined:

  The rocket offers the only known possibility of sending instruments to altitudes above those reached by sounding balloons. Observations taken outside of the earth's atmosphere or even in the higher levels of the atmosphere, would be of immense value in the study of such subjects as astronomy, meteorology and terrestrial magnetism.

  And Dr. John O. Stewart, Associate Professor of Astronomical Physics, Princeton University, declared:

  With rockets speeds of 1000 miles per hour are possible by 1950. By 2050 a rocket trip to the moon at 25,000 miles per hour is not impossible.

  Despite such open-mindedness in the world at large, within the GALCIT group, all was not well, and Malina found reason to complain about Parsons and Forman again in a letter of April 7, 1940. The complaint had nothing to do with Parsons’ newfound interest in the occult, which Forman seems to have shared to a lesser degree. Malina had his own unorthodoxies, including communism. Malina's mind was on more mundane matters. He wrote, “Need a good physicist. Forman and Parsons are all right for some types of work, sometimes they are like inventors, in the worst sense of the word.” This instance is the very last time Parsons is mentioned in any of Malina's letters home, except when his name appears with the others on a list of Aerojet founders. The break between the two was complete, although Parsons may not have realized it. Parsons remained with Forman, but Malina was with Summerfield, who joined the group that July. Later, Forman's widow would relate that her husband and Parsons thought Malina was unnecessarily “cold and arrogant” toward them.

  In August 1940, Popular Mechanics devoted six pages to the work of Parsons and Forman in an article entitled, “Seeking Power for Space Rockets,” which is informative and well-illustrated. Malina is also mentioned but not pictured. A shorter article, “New Experiments with Rockets,” appeared the following month in Popular Science and is also well-illustrated but ends with a discussion of the work of Robert Goddard and the potential military applications for rockets. They are reproduced in the pages that follow. Only Parsons and Forman are featured, which speaks well to their level of involvement at this time. While Malina was head of the project in name by virtue of his status at Caltech, Parsons and Forman were the ones doing the dirty work.

  Also in 1940, the United States started sending ammunition and supplies to England, embargoing Japan. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Congress increased defense spending 800%, from $1.9 billion to $17 billion. Von Kármán began making frequent trips to Washington, D.C, trips that would continue throughout the war. The city of Pasadena had 13,300 people working in the aircraft industry that year, a figure that may sound like a lot, but by the next year—after the United States entered the war—it had increased to 113,000. In order to recruit so many workers, Boy Scouts were hired to distribute job applications door-to-door.

  In that year, von Kármán and Malina demonstrated on paper the feasibility of long-duration burns in a confined space such as a rocket motor casing,
a procedure that von Kármán later listed as the first critical step in the development of rockets in the United States. As a result, the National Academy of Sciences immediately doubled the GALCIT group's budget for 1941, to $22,000. This action infuriated Goddard, working alone in Roswell, as he didn't appreciate the young upstarts getting all the funding and attention. His decades of work were indeed unappreciated by the world, mainly due to self-imposed isolation. Malina, Parsons and Forman shared the byline on their feasibility paper, entitled, “Air Corps Jet Propulsion Research, Final Report for 1939–40,” a copy of which is on file in the JPL archives.

  Both John Parsons and Ed Forman prominently appear in this August 1940 Popular Mechanics feature; John wearing black leather jacket and black suit jacket, and Ed clad in white.

  Small test rocket is loaded into firing stand, upper left, to trace its characteristic path. Above, putting powder charge in rocket. Diagram shows man's altitude records and his hopes for the rocket

  GUARDED by sandbags, a man sits before a panel on which are rows of gauges. As he turns valves, needles of the gauges spin and gyrate. From behind the sandbags comes a hiss, a puff of smoke.

  The man relaxes, the gauges come to rest. If it were not for the tiers of protecting sandbags, it would seem undramatic, almost unimportant. Yet in those few seconds all the fires of hell have been raging in the little cylinder behind the sandbags. Terrifically explosive gases have just reached a temperature half that of the sun and a velocity of 3,600 miles per hour—and one more experiment has been added to the long list by which men have sought to gain knowledge which will enable them to conquer outer space.

  Scientists are hard-headed men. They do not speculate on traveling to the moon every time they see a sky rocket. They say simply:

  “We are experimenting with fuels for rockets. We've found out a few things. It may be that in the reasonably near future science will succeed in sending a rocket higher than any man-made contrivance ever traveled before. Perhaps such a rocket might reach an altitude of 500,000 feet.

  Test apparatus for rocket motors, in circle, records temperatures of motor and exhaust gases, speed of intake gases, amount of gas used, etc. Right, a rocket starts up fired by remote control. Below, test rocket used at California Tech

  “If a rocket could be shot that high, it could carry recording instruments which would gather information of the greatest importance. A rocket to the moon. Men still dream of that. But science deals with facts. Still, the dream is perhaps a little bit nearer realization.”

  Behind that simple statement is another chapter in man's struggle to escape the chains of gravity which bind him to one planet.

  Three years ago it was decided to study rocket motors at California Institute of Technology. Although many rocket experiments had been conducted throughout the world, no complete and systematic investigation of motors has been available. Yet it is just those very problems of a powerful enough fuel and a long-life combustion chamber that are the stumbling blocks which are holding back rocket flights.

  To determine stability, a flying model is fired with powder by remote control, top. Center, recoil of spring gauges strength of powder fuels. Behind the sandbags (bottom) California Institute of Technology scientists test rocket motors and explosive fuel—mixture of oxygen and ethylene—developing 5,000-degree heat and gas velocities of 3,600 miles per hour

  So three experimenters at California Tech., Frank J. Malina, John W. Parsons, and Edward Forman, decided to build a rocket which did not fly, a rocket which moved but a few fractions of an inch, but which told those vital facts about what goes on when a charge is fired.

  As a background for their work, they had the long history of rocket experimentation, going back to the days of early Chinese culture when rockets were first used for fireworks displays. The western world did not begin to construct rockets until about the fourteenth century. Immediately, the question of their possible military importance arose. But no one devised a successful military rocket until 1805, when William Congreve perfected one—and in so doing helped write the American national anthem.

  For it was the Congreve rockets fired by the British forces attacking Fort McHenry that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the lines of the Star Spangled Banner, “and the rockets’ red glare.” Congreve rockets were also used with telling effect against Napoleon at Waterloo. Both incendiary and explosive charges were carried by these rockets. Not until modern artillery was developed did interest in military rockets wane.

  However, the military potentialities of rockets have again come under serious consideration. With nations searching for new weapons, rockets were bound to have their day once more.

  Major James R. Randolph of the U. S. Army recently set forth the advantages of military rockets. They are cheap, as no elaborate gun barrel or firing mechanism is needed. Rockets are fired from simple tubes. They are easy to transport. The tubes may be set up in a few moments, and a terrific fire concentration achieved suddenly, without the elaborate preparations which make artillery concentrations obvious to the foe.

  Heavy barricade of stones is laid to protect operators before bring a rocket with its nighty explosive charge (top). Dials in center show the fury of the thrust of a rocket motor in operation, its fuel consumption, temperature of motor and exhaust, and incake velocity. Three turns of ethylene gas, shown at bottom, are on a dencate balance accurate to one-tench ounce

  But whatever the military significance of the rocket, its most dramatic and intriguing potentiality is that of conquering space. Although many older writers of fantasy speculated on space rockets, the first really practical experimentation in America was done by Prof. R. H. Goddard, beginning in 1909.

  In 1918 Goddard published a set of calculations which he believed established the possibility of a rocket flight to the moon. If such a rocket could be constructed, he proposed that a small charge of flash powder be carried, and exploded when the rocket struck the moon. The flash would be visible to the earth's large telescopes.

  Ten years later Goddard fired some experimental altitude rockets which attained a height of about two miles and a vertical climbing speed of 700 miles per hour, far greater than the fastest airplane. Since that time, Goddard has continued his experiments in perfecting rocket design. Recently he incorporated a gyroscope to stabilize his rockets during flight.

  In this photo, taken the last day of the Ercoupe tests in August 1941, Helen Parsons is seen among friends and family, third from the left. Parsons and Forman are once again seen fourth and third from the left of the test plane.

  Photo courtesy of JPL Archive

  Founding members of the Aerojet Engineering Corporation at Wright Field. Photographed in front of the Havoc Bomber are: Theodore C. Coleman, director of Aerojet; Parsons, vice-president; Edward S. Forman, vice-president production; Andrew G. Haley, president; Theodore von Kármán, founder and chairman of the board; Frank J. Malina, secretary-treasurer; Martin Summerfield, vice-president engineering; and T. Edward Beehan, general manager.

  Photo courtesy of Aerojet

  However, the old problem of a sufficiently powerful fuel and a sufficiently durable firing chamber still remained. Certain experiments seem to favor the use of powder explosives, but in general, liquid fuels seem to offer the best prospects. A combination of liquid oxygen and gasoline has proved very efficient.

  Rockets powered by such fuels have been used by the American and German rocket societies. A British society has made speculative plans for space travel should the day ever arrive when fuel and construction problems are licked. This society has designed space suits, and has even made tentative arrangements to secure human beings who would be willing to take the terrific gamble should the conquest of space ever be technically possible.

  These problems of fuel and combustion chamber the California Tech. scientists have set out to study—and they have made such advancement that they talk of a sounding rocket which might reach a height of half a million feet.

  The first pr
oblem faced was to design a highly accurate testing machine. Such a device must be able to register thrust, temperature, pressure of gases, amount of fuel used, and the efficiency of the combustion.

  For experimental purposes gaseous combustibles are used instead of liquid. The propellant now being experimented with is a mixture of ethylene and oxygen. These gases are kept under pressures of 1,200 and 2,000 pounds to the square inch. Operators control the flow of gas by means of valves. The gauges which record the performance of the rocket motor are photographed to give a permanent record.

  The rocket motor is a single steel cylinder about eighteen inches long and six in diameter. It is lined with carbon to guard against the terrific heat when the motor is operated. A temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit is sometimes reached—almost half that of the sun's corona.

  Rocket motor, tanks of ethylene and oxygen, and connecting tubes are mounted on a torsion balance so delicate that it will register forces of only one-tenth of an ounce. When the motor is fired, motor, lines, and braces move as a single unit. The thrust is then registered by a dial on the control panel.

  Because of the terrifically explosive character of all fuels used, the control panel and operator are protected from the firing chamber by sandbags. Once a nozzle blew out during a test, and the resulting roar was heard for blocks.

  Nozzles for the rocket motor are made from such substances as pure carbon, stainless steel, and copper alloys. Experiments have shown that few substances, will stand the extreme heat and pressure of the exhaust gases. Velocities of 6,000 feet per second, or better than 3,600 miles per hour, have been recorded. Often after one minute in the firing chamber, a nozzle, which a moment before was a beautifully machined piece of metal, will be charred, distorted, and blacked, looking as if it had been subjected to the eternal fires.