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Authors: George Pendle
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have been more wrong. For a boy who naturally shied away from groups and regimentation, the forty-acre academy known as âthe West Point of the Westâ was unfortunate in every respect. He was dismayed to find the school rife with bullies, and his protector Forman was far away in Pasadena. If the academy taught him anything, it was that the practical application of explosives could cause a rapid reaction. âHe blew up the toilets in the whole goddamn place,â remembered Jeanne Forman, Ed Formanâs future wife, and was promptly sent home again. Helen Parsons recalled, âThey were trying to make a man out of him and they got a donkey.â
Back in Pasadena, he renewed both his friendship with Forman and his rocketry experiments. At school the other pupils did not make fun of him anymore. He had gained the confidence that only being expelled from a military academy can give one. Whatâs more, he was rapidly becoming a good-looking boy, with his long black hair greased straight back and âglowing, piercingâ eyes.
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Parsonsâ and Formanâs minds may have been fizzing with the idea of rockets, but the world itself was quite indifferent to thoughts of travel to the moon. Instead, the airplane and its supporting science of aeronautics ruled both the skies and dreams. In the 1920s the burgeoning new business of aviation had chosen Southern California as its center. Attracted by the promise of 350 clear flying days a year and the ability to park planes outside, pioneer aviators such as Glenn Martin, Donald W. Douglas, John Northrup, and Allan and Malcolm Loughead (later Lockheed) set up shop around Los Angeles. They were young men in their early thirties who happily worked together building planes in disused movie lots with the backing of wealthy aviation enthusiasts. They initially sold their aircraft to the navy or to the postal service, which needed mail carriers. However, by the late 1920s the development of passenger lines offering flights from Los Angeles to San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City had increased demand rapidly. More and more aircraft were being built, and Los Angeles had become the undisputed capital of the aviation industry in America.
Adding a further thrill to this budding industry was the glamour that surrounded flight. When in 1927 Charles Lindbergh succeeded in the first solo, nonstop airplane flight across the Atlantic, he made aviation the adventure of the day. In Los Angeles the appeal of the airplane had been amply demonstrated by the millionaire playboy, Howard Hughes, who had begun filming his First World War aerial masterpiece
Hellâs Angels
in the skies above. Having amassed the largest private air force in the world, he was now filming aerial dogfights along the coast, wowing the populace and firmly establishing the airplane as the preeminent awe-inspiring technology of the day.
The government and the academic world followed suit. As universities built science departments, the propeller-driven airplane was seen as the harbinger of the new technological age, receiving ample support. However, there were no compelling economic, military, or scientific reasons to study the rocket, which at the time was used solely to propel lifelines aboard ships and occasionally whaling harpoons. Thus, anyone who saw possibilities in the use of rockets had to work alone, driven solely by personal passion.
Unsurprisingly, those that did study these strange and impractical engines were not cut from the usual scientific cloth. In 1881, a twenty-seven-year-old Russian explosives technician named Nikolai Kibalchich sketched and described a flight vehicle propelled by a solid-fuel rocket. The rocketeer envisioned a moveable rocket engine attached to a platform, which would allow the craft to be steered by adjusting the direction of thrust of the engine. âI think that in practice, such a task is achievable ... and can be accomplished with modern
Back in Pasadena, he renewed both his friendship with Forman and his rocketry experiments. At school the other pupils did not make fun of him anymore. He had gained the confidence that only being expelled from a military academy can give one. Whatâs more, he was rapidly becoming a good-looking boy, with his long black hair greased straight back and âglowing, piercingâ eyes.
Â
Parsonsâ and Formanâs minds may have been fizzing with the idea of rockets, but the world itself was quite indifferent to thoughts of travel to the moon. Instead, the airplane and its supporting science of aeronautics ruled both the skies and dreams. In the 1920s the burgeoning new business of aviation had chosen Southern California as its center. Attracted by the promise of 350 clear flying days a year and the ability to park planes outside, pioneer aviators such as Glenn Martin, Donald W. Douglas, John Northrup, and Allan and Malcolm Loughead (later Lockheed) set up shop around Los Angeles. They were young men in their early thirties who happily worked together building planes in disused movie lots with the backing of wealthy aviation enthusiasts. They initially sold their aircraft to the navy or to the postal service, which needed mail carriers. However, by the late 1920s the development of passenger lines offering flights from Los Angeles to San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City had increased demand rapidly. More and more aircraft were being built, and Los Angeles had become the undisputed capital of the aviation industry in America.
Adding a further thrill to this budding industry was the glamour that surrounded flight. When in 1927 Charles Lindbergh succeeded in the first solo, nonstop airplane flight across the Atlantic, he made aviation the adventure of the day. In Los Angeles the appeal of the airplane had been amply demonstrated by the millionaire playboy, Howard Hughes, who had begun filming his First World War aerial masterpiece
Hellâs Angels
in the skies above. Having amassed the largest private air force in the world, he was now filming aerial dogfights along the coast, wowing the populace and firmly establishing the airplane as the preeminent awe-inspiring technology of the day.
The government and the academic world followed suit. As universities built science departments, the propeller-driven airplane was seen as the harbinger of the new technological age, receiving ample support. However, there were no compelling economic, military, or scientific reasons to study the rocket, which at the time was used solely to propel lifelines aboard ships and occasionally whaling harpoons. Thus, anyone who saw possibilities in the use of rockets had to work alone, driven solely by personal passion.
Unsurprisingly, those that did study these strange and impractical engines were not cut from the usual scientific cloth. In 1881, a twenty-seven-year-old Russian explosives technician named Nikolai Kibalchich sketched and described a flight vehicle propelled by a solid-fuel rocket. The rocketeer envisioned a moveable rocket engine attached to a platform, which would allow the craft to be steered by adjusting the direction of thrust of the engine. âI think that in practice, such a task is achievable ... and can be accomplished with modern
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