Great escapes

摘要

His is not a name to trip off the tongue but space aficionados would have heard of Frank J. Malina, a pioneer in rocketry during the 1930s and 1940s and whose life was shaped not only by his technical ingenuity and inventiveness but by his political views. Born in Texas in 1912, Malina became a mechanical engineer and joined the furtive group of experimenters dabbling in rockets at the California Institute of Technology and became the second director the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. In 1942 he founded the Aerojet Corporation. From there rocket tests moved to White Sands Missile Range and development of the WAC Corporal missile, also used for scientific research.