The Insane History of Rockets at Jet Propulsion Laboratories
The Rocket Boys
In the late 1930s, a group of Caltech graduate students were booted off campus after blowing up (part of!) their building during a rocket test gone awry. Unwilling to give up on the joy of semi-controlled explosions, the students and a few of their friends headed into the San Gabriel Mountains. They picked a deserted gully — Arroyo Seco — and got testing. This was about when their classmates starting calling the gathering the Suicide Club.
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1936: Rudolph Schott, Apollo Milton Olin Smith, Frank Malina, Ed Forman and Jack Parsons: Rocket Boys, or Suicide Club?
Frank Malina studied aerodynamics at Caltech. Jack Parons was a high school drop-out and a self-taught chemist. Ed Forman was an excellent mechanic. Their first round of testing in October 1936 was less-than-successful: the last test of the day, they accidentally lit their oxygen line on fire. The line whipped around, a snaking hose of fire that somehow didn’t kill anyone. Undeterred, they kept trying. By November, their tests worked.
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