Space History for November 1

[CalliArcale]

It's been a while since I've done one of these. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />In 1923, Robert Goddard test-fired the first liquid-fueled rocket motor. This was a major step towards his eventual first flight, and the future of rocketry in general.<br /><br />In 1944, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was founded. Originally created to research the nascent field of jet propulsion (hence the name), the lab would eventually become synonymous with sophisticated robotic exploration of the solar system. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[zavvy]

<font color="yellow">In 1944, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was founded. </font><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />Here's some interesting trivia from The Fortean Times about one of the founding members of JPL, Jack Parsons. <br /><br />A 'colourful' character to say the least... <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br /><b>King of the Rocket Men</b><br /><br />John Whiteside Parsons, born Marvel, known as Jack, writer, visionary, dedicated occultist, and chemist of genius, was born in 1914 and died in 1952 in a mysterious explosion whose cause has never been fully explained. He was a tall handsome Californian, whose early work on highly volatile rocket-motor fuels was regarded highly enough for French scientists of a later generation to name a crater on the moon after him. Parsons introduced into early American rocketry a range of exotic solid and liquid fuels whose later forms were eventually to help drive Apollo 11 to the Moon. He helped create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, now a major industrial complex. In early colour footage from JPL archives, he looks like a better-fed James Dean in some 1950s road movie. In the manner of many mid-century heroes such as Dean, his life was more a script than a life. Today, over fifty years later, we can run Parsons in our heads, in torn jeans and greasy shirt as he off-loads equipment from a hired pick-up truck in the baking dust of some remote desert arroyo, and gets ready for one of his many pre-war rocket experiments.<br /><br /><br />By August 1941, these tests had produced rockets stable enough to use as bolt-on jet-assisted-take-off (JATO) [1] units for military aircraft. Daring experiments, probably the first of their kind in the world, were also made with no less than 12 of these 28lb/12-second thrust units fitted to an Ercoupe light aircraft. With its propeller removed, the hobby-plane soared and landed. Thus a mail-order