JPL celebrates 75th anniversary

Los Angeles Times : NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was started 75 years ago by a group of Caltech students who were assistants of Theodore von Kármán, a pioneer in aeronautical engineering and fluid dynamics. Dubbed the Suicide Squad, Ed Forman, H. S. Tsien, Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, Rudolph Schott, and A. M. O. Smith at first tested their homemade rockets on campus. But because of the loud and potentially dangerous explosions, they were forced to move their experiments away from Caltech to a dry creek bed, the Arroyo Seco. During World War II, working out of tarpaper shacks, the group developed rockets that were strapped to US Army aircraft to boost takeoff. Squad member Malina went on to become JPL’s director.