Great contribution from Mr Jack Parsons to Nasa

Date : 07.10.2010
Time : 12pm

Currently saw some documentary comments about hows Mr Jack Parsons contribution to NASA. And I west to Yahoo to do some research and found his details.
Below is the History about this man.

Jack Parsons
John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914 – died June 17, 1952) was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology. He was one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corp. A psychologically unstable occultist and Thelemite he was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of English author and Thelema's founder Aleister Crowley. In this capacity, he belonged to an American lodge of Crowley's magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).

Youth
Parsons was the only child of a rich but dysfunctional family.^{[citation needed]} When he was a teenager his father walked out on his wife and son. Parsons landed a job with the Hercules Powder Company while still a senior in high school. The following year, he entered Pasadena Junior College and spent two years at the University of Southern California, although he did not graduate.
Parsons and Helen Northrup were married in April 1935.^[1]

Parsons and the Space Age
In 1936, Parsons joined the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) of the California Institute of Technology, where he worked for Frank Malina and Theodore von Kármán in Pasadena.
While his formal education was limited, Parsons demonstrated tremendous scientific aptitude and genius, particularly in chemistry. His rocket research was some of the earliest in the United States, and his pioneering work in the development of solid fuel and the invention of JATO units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity's space age. The noted engineer Theodore von Kármán, Parsons's friend and benefactor, declared that the work of Parsons and his peers helped usher in the age of space travel.^[2] Parsons co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, commonly referred to as JPL. According to von Kármán, Parsons' work in solid fuel research "... made possible such outstanding rockets as the Polaris and the Minuteman.^[3]
It was in 1942, the same year Parsons was appointed as head of the Agapé Lodge by Aleister Crowley (who himself had studied chemistry), that Parsons made the crucial breakthrough in the development of rocket solid fuel. Following intuition, Parson switched from black powder to asphalt and potassium perchlorate. Compared with Peenemünde, America was finally in the race for rocket propulsion with solid fuel for the space age.^[4]

Parsons and the occult
Parsons saw no contradiction between his scientific and magical pursuits. Before each rocket test launch, Parsons would chant Crowley's hymn to the Greek god Pan.^[5] In 1942 Parsons was chosen by Aleister Crowley to lead the Agapé Lodge of OTO in California following Crowley's expulsion of Wilfred Smith from the position.^[6]
Sara Northrup (aka "Sarah Elizabeth" or "Betty" Northrup), began living with Parsons and Parsons' wife, Sara's half-sister Helen Northrup; later, Parsons and Sara became involved in an affair, which caused strife with Helen and eventually led to Helen leaving with Wilfred Smith. Sara Northrup would later marry author L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of the Church of Scientology. Before that time, Hubbard would serve as occasional magical partner of Parsons.

Babalon Working and Marjorie Cameron
Parsons, a science fiction fan, had read in the pulp magazine Unknown the 1940 original short version of Jack Williamson "Darker Than You Think". Parsons had identified the story's prominent redheaded female character with Crowley's Babalon or the "Scarlet Woman", who Crowley had prophesied would help to fulfill the post-Christian Aeon of Horus. In 1946, Parsons and Hubbard (whose own works Fear and Typewriter in the Sky, among others, had also appeared in Unknown) participated in the Babalon Working. Loosely speaking, the Babalon Working was a ritual to summon this Scarlet Woman. Paul Rydeen writes:

The purpose of Parson's operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah.^[7]

Crowley, residing in his home in England, disapproved. Nevertheless, Parson ended the ritual by declaring it successful. Almost immediately he met Marjorie Cameron right in his own home, and regarded her as the Scarlet Woman, the fulfillment of the ritual. Parsons, Hubbard, and Cameron then proceeded to the next stage of the Babalon Working, with Cameron acting as Parsons' magical sexual partner with whom he could sire a Moonchild. The creation of this Moonchild had been previously covered in fictional form in Crowley's novel Moonchild. A physical child was not conceived, but this did not affect the results of the ritual; as Parsons and Cameron soon married.
In January 1946, Parsons, Sarah Northrup, and Hubbard began a boat dealing company named Allied Enterprises. Parsons put in the sum of approximately $21,000 of which Hubbard put in $1,200. Hubbard eventually abandoned Parsons and their business plans, leaving for a port in Florida with the boat and with Sarah. Parsons retreated to his hotel room and summoned a typhoon in retribution (viz., with an evocation of Bartzabel^[8] — an intelligence presiding over the astrological forces associated with the planet Mars). A Florida court later dissolved the poorly-contracted business, ordered repayment of debts to Parsons, and awarded ownership of the boat to Hubbard.
Parsons resigned his leadership of the Agapé Lodge in 1946.

Death
Fritz Zwicky, a member of the original Aerojet team, disliked Parsons, and described him as a "dangerous man". This pronouncement would prove prophetic, at least for Parsons himself. On 17 June 1952 Parsons was killed in an explosion of fulminate of mercury at his home laboratory. Though gravely injured, he survived the immediate explosion, but he died of his wounds a few hours later. Distraught, Parsons' mother killed herself just hours after he died.^[2]
Unsubstantiated rumors of suicide, murder or a magical ritual gone wrong have attempted to explain Parsons' death. However, Parsons did store many volatile chemicals and compounds in his laboratory and had been working to finish a contract for a special effects firm.^[2]

Parsons in popular culture
Before his death, Jack Parsons appeared in science fiction writer's Anthony Boucher's murder mystery Rocket to the Morgue (1942) under the guise of Hugo Chantrelle. (In the same book, a fictional version of L. Ron Hubbard appears as a character named D. Vance Wimpole.)
Parsons' relationship with Hubbard also appears in Feral House's Apocalypse Culture, Paradox's Big Book of Conspiracies, Alan Moore's Cobweb story in Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions, and in the Jon Atack nonfiction book A Piece of Blue Sky. He was also one of the characters in the Craig Baldwin's collage film Mock Up on Mu. He is referenced in Philip K. Dick's novel Dr. Futurity, in which the protagonist is named Jack Parsons. A play about Parsons, Babalon, by Paul Green, was performed in London in December 2005 by Travesty Theatre. There is an entry dedicated to Parsons in The QI Book of the Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. A stage play about Parsons by George Morgan, Pasadena Babalon, premiered at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 2010.^[9] It was directed by film and TV actor Brian Brophy.

Honors
The crater Parsons on the far side of the Moon is named after him.^[10]