Jack Parsons (rocket engineer)
John Whiteside Parsons (October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets. Parsons died at the age of 37 in a home laboratory explosion that attracted national media attention.
About Jack Parsons (rocket engineer) in brief
John Whiteside Parsons (October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets. Parsons died at the age of 37 in a home laboratory explosion that attracted national media attention; the police ruled it an accident, but many associates suspected suicide or murder. Parsons’s occult and libertarian writings were published posthumously, with Western esoteric and countercultural circles citing him as one of most significant figures in propagating Thelema across North America. For these innovations, his advocacy of space exploration and human spaceflight, and his role in founding JPL and Aerojet, Parsons is regarded as among the most important figures in the history of the U.S. space program. His son was his father’s namesake, but was known in the household as Jack. His parents, Ruth Virginia Whiteside and Marvel H. Parsons, had moved to California from Massachusetts the previous year, purchasing a house on Scarff Street in downtown Los Angeles. His father later joined the armed forces, married a woman with whom he had a son, Charles, a half-brother, and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. Although many knew him as Jack, Ruth started calling her son John. Jack’s father returned to Massachusetts after being publicly exposed as an adulterer, with Ruth forbidding him from having any contact with Jack.
After a brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to the English occultist Aleister Crowley’s new religious movement. In 1945 Parsons separated from Helen Northrup after having an affair with her sister Sara; when Sara left him for L. Ron Hubbard, he conducted the Babalon Working, a series of rituals designed to invoke the Thelemic goddess Babalon to Earth. He and Hubbard continued the procedure with Marjorie Cameron, whom Parsons married in 1946. After the war, Parsons resigned from the O. T. O. and held various jobs while acting as a consultant for Israel’s rocket program. He was accused of espionage and left unable to work in rocketry. Although academic interest in his scientific career was negligible, historians came to recognize Parsons’s contributions to rocket engineering. He spent much time reading in mythology, Arthurian legend, and works of Jules Verne and the Arabian Nights. He lived in an upscale house on Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena, California, known locally as “Millionaire’s Mile”—known locally as “Jack’s Mile” His parents moved to be with Jack and their daughter, Carrie, using their wealth to buy their upscale house. He had a few friends, but he lived a solitary childhood and lived a few days a week with Carrie and her friends, and lived an isolated life. He never met his ex-husband, but once met her once, she retained her surname.
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