3.4 Early Astronautical Societies and Historical Merits
133
Coincidently, in March 1935 at one of the weekly GALCIT seminars, William
Bollay, then a graduate assistant under von Kármán, reviewed the possibilities of
a rocket-powered aircraft based upon a paper published by Eugen Sänger. The
following October, Bollay gave a lecture on the subject before the Institute of the
Aeronautical Science in Los Angeles. Local newspapers reported on Bollay’s lecture,
which resulted in attracting to GALCIT two rocket enthusiasts, John W. Parsons and
Edward S. Forman. Parsons was a self-trained chemist who, although he lacked the
discipline of formal higher education, had an uninhibited and fruitful imagination.
Forman, a skilled mechanic, had been working for some time with Parsons on powder
rockets. They were going to develop a liquid-propellant rocket motor but found that
they lacked adequate technical and financial resources for the task. They found Bollay
at Caltech for help while Bollay directly sent them to Malina, who was considering
the problem on rocket [6].
In February 1936, Malina proposed a detailed program to his mentor von Kármán
that he with Parsons and Forman would design a sounding rocket carrying scientific
instruments into the upper atmosphere to an altitude of about 40 km, with a plan
for a combination of theoretical studies and experiments. Despite the fact that both
Parsons and Forman had no Caltech affiliation, von Kármán agreed to support the
trio, and only to provide advice and use of the facilities but no actual funding. The
trio was the first members of the rocket research team at the GALCIT, and soon
after some graduate students were attracted to join the team, including Apollo M.O.
Smith who would go on to become chief aerodynamics engineer at Douglas Aircraft
Company, and Xuesen Qian who led Chinese aerospace industry from the late of
1950s to 1970s and was known as the father of Chinese rocketry and spaceflight.
The team rapidly came up with a number of inventions and innovations on the design
of rocket nozzles, composite solid propellants and rocket design like the regenerative
cooling of the motors and rocket-stabilized control system. Qian worked with Malina
mainly on the thermodynamic characteristics of the motors. Although Malina as
leader of the team imposed repeatedly scientific rigor, there were extraordinary risks
in the experiments. In a memorable experiment, a small rocket motor that they were
testing misfired, releasing a corrosive cloud of nitrogen dioxide–alcohol mixture
that permeated most of the GALCIT and left behind a thin layer of rust on much of
the permanent equipment of the laboratory, and then there was a serious explosion
of gas apparatus, but fortunately, none was hurt. Thereafter, they were known at
Caltech as the “Suicide Squad”. Since then, they were told to move the apparatus
outside the campus at once, and eventually, a series of tests on rocket engines were
conducted at Arroyo Seco, a dry river basin on the western edge of Pasadena. Their
theoretical calculations, including fuel consumption, thrust, as well as temperatures
and pressures inside the motors, could be backed up from the crucial data provided
by the tests. By January 1937, the team had successfully developed and tested a
rocket motor with a duration-running of 40 s. Over the next year and a half, the
team continued their experiments as time and funding allowed, and Malina with
Smith published a landmark paper on the flight performance of a constant-thrust
sounding rocket in the Journal of Aeronautical Science. Although the experiments
were advanced steadily, their research results drew little outside interests.
133
Coincidently, in March 1935 at one of the weekly GALCIT seminars, William
Bollay, then a graduate assistant under von Kármán, reviewed the possibilities of
a rocket-powered aircraft based upon a paper published by Eugen Sänger. The
following October, Bollay gave a lecture on the subject before the Institute of the
Aeronautical Science in Los Angeles. Local newspapers reported on Bollay’s lecture,
which resulted in attracting to GALCIT two rocket enthusiasts, John W. Parsons and
Edward S. Forman. Parsons was a self-trained chemist who, although he lacked the
discipline of formal higher education, had an uninhibited and fruitful imagination.
Forman, a skilled mechanic, had been working for some time with Parsons on powder
rockets. They were going to develop a liquid-propellant rocket motor but found that
they lacked adequate technical and financial resources for the task. They found Bollay
at Caltech for help while Bollay directly sent them to Malina, who was considering
the problem on rocket [6].
In February 1936, Malina proposed a detailed program to his mentor von Kármán
that he with Parsons and Forman would design a sounding rocket carrying scientific
instruments into the upper atmosphere to an altitude of about 40 km, with a plan
for a combination of theoretical studies and experiments. Despite the fact that both
Parsons and Forman had no Caltech affiliation, von Kármán agreed to support the
trio, and only to provide advice and use of the facilities but no actual funding. The
trio was the first members of the rocket research team at the GALCIT, and soon
after some graduate students were attracted to join the team, including Apollo M.O.
Smith who would go on to become chief aerodynamics engineer at Douglas Aircraft
Company, and Xuesen Qian who led Chinese aerospace industry from the late of
1950s to 1970s and was known as the father of Chinese rocketry and spaceflight.
The team rapidly came up with a number of inventions and innovations on the design
of rocket nozzles, composite solid propellants and rocket design like the regenerative
cooling of the motors and rocket-stabilized control system. Qian worked with Malina
mainly on the thermodynamic characteristics of the motors. Although Malina as
leader of the team imposed repeatedly scientific rigor, there were extraordinary risks
in the experiments. In a memorable experiment, a small rocket motor that they were
testing misfired, releasing a corrosive cloud of nitrogen dioxide–alcohol mixture
that permeated most of the GALCIT and left behind a thin layer of rust on much of
the permanent equipment of the laboratory, and then there was a serious explosion
of gas apparatus, but fortunately, none was hurt. Thereafter, they were known at
Caltech as the “Suicide Squad”. Since then, they were told to move the apparatus
outside the campus at once, and eventually, a series of tests on rocket engines were
conducted at Arroyo Seco, a dry river basin on the western edge of Pasadena. Their
theoretical calculations, including fuel consumption, thrust, as well as temperatures
and pressures inside the motors, could be backed up from the crucial data provided
by the tests. By January 1937, the team had successfully developed and tested a
rocket motor with a duration-running of 40 s. Over the next year and a half, the
team continued their experiments as time and funding allowed, and Malina with
Smith published a landmark paper on the flight performance of a constant-thrust
sounding rocket in the Journal of Aeronautical Science. Although the experiments
were advanced steadily, their research results drew little outside interests.