# William Pickering Presents JPL: The Early Years

### Larry Palkovic

Like Norm Haynes' presentation last December 4, the audience is filled
with the buzz of old timers, catching up. "Dr. Bill's" stories promise
to throw a light on the earliest days at the Lab (Pickering was at
Caltech as early as 1929---even before Frank Malina began his now-famous
experiments into rocketry). After a brief, but glowing introduction by
the Library's Teresa Bailey, the former director faces the generous
applause of the friendly audience as the first storyteller or the (real)
New Millennium.

Dr. Pickering looks around and sees lots of old-timers' faces. He'll go
back to the year 1 and talk about how we got where we are now. There's
some 60 years of history here, and much of it was before there was a
NASA.

## Frank Malina

We'll start with the graduate student project of Frank Malina, who
wanted to study the physics of rocketry in the mid-'30s. His major
professor was horrified---rocketry had a disreputable, space-cadet
cachet at that time. Few were doing any serious work in it. Robert
Goddard was working in New Mexico on liquid-fueled rockets---but that
was about it. Malina's professor thought he was out of his mind, but
Frank was persistent. He talked to Theodore von Kármán, who encouraged
him to pursue his interest. His initial experiments took place in the
Aeronautics building---until the administration, in the interests of
safety, urged him to work off-campus. So he settled in the dry wash at
the upper end of the Arroyo Seco, not 400 yards from the bronze plaque
just east of the Visitor's Center that commemorates his early efforts
today. (See the photo from 1936.)

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="4.689583333333333in"
height="3.234722222222222in"}

How was Malina's early project supported? In one famous story, after one
of his public seminars on rocketry, during which he mentioned a need for
funds, he was approached by a graduate student named Arnold with a paper
bag---full of cash! It held maybe \$1000 in small bills. Malina never
asked where it came from, and Arnold was never seen again. Eventually,
government money became available.

## JPL Goes to War

In those early days running an engine for 15 seconds before it blew up
was an impressive feat---but the engines did get better. By the early
'40s, JPL had developed pretty reliable motors of modest thrust in the
tens-of-pounds range. We began to wonder how to apply them. Could you
use them on airplanes? And so JPL developed the solid-fueled JATO
(jet-assisted take-off) device to shorten the distance planes needed to
take-off. (See the 1942 photo.)

![](media/image2.png){width="4.341666666666667in"
height="2.6145833333333335in"}

The Navy liked the idea, too, but favored a liquid-fueled model, which
they tested at (what is now) Edwards AFB.

We were at war then, and the military wanted more. So Aerojet was
founded in 1942 by von Kármán and other JPLers to take advantage of the
developments they'd pioneered, and exploit the demands of the commercial
and government market. And in 1944, Frank Malina succeeded von Kármán as
the second Lab director.

*Rockets actually have a long military history. They were invented by
the Chinese a thousand years ago. In the early 1800s they were used for
bombardment---remember "the rockets' red glare" sung in the National
Anthem? But they could not be aimed. With the development of rifled
barrels, cannon soon dominated military ordnance, and the military
rocket was all but forgotten.*

In World War II, rockets returned to military arsenals. Small rockets
were widely used in saturation bombardment to soften defenses before
amphibious landings. These rockets were developed and built by a second
Caltech rocket project, the Eaton Canyon Project, sponsored by the Navy.
Before the end of World War II, this project delivered more than a
million rockets to the Navy. The Inyokern rocket test facility was
established to support this program. But, by the end of the war, Caltech
was anxious to close the Eaton Canyon project and the Navy took over
Inyokern.

Before the end of the war, Malina's rocket project, which had been known
as the GALCIT (Guggenheim Aeronautical Lab, Caltech) project changed its
name to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The word "rocket" was still not
in good standing.

## JPL Extends Its Reach

The German development of the V-2, which had a range of 200 miles, led
to Army Ordnance coming to the Lab and asking us to do research on such
a ballistic rocket. We had already experimented with a small,
solid-propellant, unguided rocket with a range of 10 miles which we
called "Private." Now we were asked to build a much larger, guided
rocket, so we called it "Corporal."

By 1947, with Louis Dunn now Lab Director, we were firing liquid-fueled
rockets for Army Ordnance at the White Sands Proving Grounds, which was
an extension of the old Fort Bliss Bombing Range. The Caltech program
had developed from pure research in the physics, chemistry, and
mechanics of rocket engines to development of real weapons systems. As
the lab embarked on a new phase, established on the basics in solid- and
liquid-fueled rockets developed at the Lab, they eventually closed the
old test stands in the Arroyo.

![](media/image3.png){width="3.251388888888889in"
height="4.934027777777778in"}The new phase depended on guidance and
telemetry. One of the stars of 1947 was the WAC Corporal sounding rocket
that could deliver data on atmospheric conditions 200,000 feet up. The
lab provided a foretaste of things to come when we mounted a WAC
corporal on the nose of a captured V2 as Project Bumper and launched the
first two-staged rocket out of the atmosphere.

At the end of the War, the US army gathered the bulk of Germany's top
rocket scientists (who preferred not to surrender to the advancing
Russians). After a brief stop at Wright AFB, they settled at Ft. Bliss
with about 50 captured V2s. The neighboring White Sands Bombing Range
became a missile test range. When an early V2 wandered over the Mexican
border and hit Juarez, the Army quickly developed a destruct mechanism
for strays.

The need for a longer test range was obvious to the Army. Their first
choice was to launch southeast from El Centro in southern California,
near the northern end of the Gulf of California. But, perhaps with
memories of Juarez still fresh, the Mexican Government objected and the
Army turned to their second choice. Some of the now-famous two-stage
Bumper WACs had been launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 1950, so
the launch site was relocated near Patrick AFB. The southeast-stretching
range needed listening posts, and with so many islands in the Caribbean
run by a British government eager to share data, the Eastern Test Range
became a reality.

In the new Missile Phase, with a stronger airframe, better control
system, and lots of new and better plumbing, JPL's rockets---like the
Corporal---were capable of delivering a 1000-pound warhead 100 miles.
But the Army wanted a production version for use in the field by your
average GI under *all* conditions.

Under Louis Dunn's direction, the Lab converted the research vehicle
into a weapon. Production was contracted to Firestone and Gilfillan for
mechanical and electrical components.

Since Corporal had been a research vehicle, it was not very successful.
When the Army took bids for the replacement of the Corporal, JPL won the
contract with Sergeant, which was solid-fueled, inertially guided, and
ruggedized for use in the field. The Army selected Sperry Corporation
for the production contract. These missiles, built in 1958, are still
finding a use as research vehicles for upper air data collection. The
University of Alaska has a research station at Poker Flats near
Fairbanks, and Sergeant serves them well.

In the early 1950s the Lab had reached a pretty substantial size,
boasting even a supersonic wind tunnel. But the basic research into
rocketry, which involved storing toxic and unstable fuels, and firing
within earshot of residences, was becoming too risky and expensive.
Still the numbers continued to grow with more chemists, electricians,
and support personnel. Many more came for electronics, guidance,
telemetry, and instrumentation.

## The Pickering Era

But the Sergeant project was the last JPL-developed missile. In 1954,
the year Bill Pickering succeeded Louis Dunn as Lab Director, JPL was
already moving to space exploration. The International Geophysical Year
(July 1957 to December 1958) was an important driver. Atmospheric
sounding rockets were to be widely used, and both the US and USSR had
promised to launch artificial satellites.

The basic WAC Corporal design was adopted by Aerojet and developed into
the Aerobee for upper-atmosphere research. The Aerobee's vertical flight
profile generated lots of data, and it became a standard for the IGY.

Initially, the US government was unimpressed with the military future of
the long-range rocket. The premier strategic weapon in the US arsenal
was the hydrogen bomb, and, given the enormous size of the early models,
no less than Vannevar Bush declared that the rocket could never deliver
so heavy a weapon to target. The late 1940s saw no funds for development
of such strategic weapons. The Soviets, however, were not listening; by
1955 they had developed the prototype for the Semyorka, the workhorse of
their fleet.

*The Semyorka was originally designed to throw a 6-ton warhead 7500
miles. The rocket that put the 184-pound Sputnik 1 into orbit developed
877,000 pounds of thrust at lift-off. Vanguard 1, by contrast, developed
28,000 lbs of thrust to orbit a 3.5-lb payload, and the Jupiter C that
orbited the 30-lb Explorer 1 developed 83,000 lbs of thrust. Ed.*

In the '50s, pure science was to be separate from military boosters, so
the job of lofting the first US satellite went to the Navy and their
Vanguard launcher. But in late 1957, the Vanguard, converted from the
Viking sounding rocket, was in trouble.

Pickering was in Washington in early October, 1957, to attend a meeting
of scientists reporting on progress in the IGY. Anatoliy Blagonravov,
Chairman of the Soviet Academy of Science\'s Commission on Exploration
and Use of Space, reported that a Soviet launch of an IGY satellite was
near.

At the end of the week of meetings, on Friday evening October 4th, the
group was invited to a reception at the Soviet Embassy. The first report
that Sputnik I had been launched successfully came from a New York Times
reporter, Walter Sullivan, who had been sent to the reception by his
newspaper because of a broadcast from Moscow Radio. Lloyd Berker, the
senior US scientist present, talked to the reporter and then proposed a
toast to the Soviet success.

A small group of US scientists soon gathered at the IGY office nearby
and sorted through numerous, mostly false, reports of seeing or
listening to the Sputnik. Eventually with data from the RCA receiving
station on Long Island, we were able to confirm the orbit of the
satellite.

The Soviets stayed busy, launching a much larger Sputnik II with the dog
Laika aboard on November 3. Because of the Navy's continuing problems
with Vanguard, JPL and the Army were given the word on November 9 to
prepare an alternate satellite (which von Braun had first proposed in
1954) for launch.

Meanwhile, the Navy forged ahead and, in a valiant effort to salvage
national pride, launched on Dec 6. The rocket got a few feet off the pad
before it blew into a million pieces. It was sad and acutely
embarrassing.

On Jan 31 JPL's Explorer 1 roared into history atop one of the Army's
Jupiter Cs. \[See
<http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/expinfo.html>\] It
was a military launch, and no press had been invited (although the UPI
had called in the middle of the month to check on the developing story).

![](media/image4.jpeg){width="3.670138888888889in"
height="2.9055555555555554in"}Dr. Pickering was not at the Cape for the
launch, but was, instead, at the Pentagon with Wernher Von Braun (whose
Jupiter-C was a lineal descendant of the V-2s he had developed during
the war) and James Van Allen of Iowa State University (who had designed
and built the satellite's instrumentation). Without the elaborate
communication network we have today, they had to communicate by phone
and teletype to confirm the first orbit. Afterwards, they drove to the
National Academy of Sciences---after midnight and in the rain---to meet
the press. Their uncertainty over how their accomplishment would be met
was quickly dispelled. The photo of the three of them (left to
right---Pickering, Van Allen, and Von Braun) displaying a mock-up of the
satellite like a trophy says it all.

## A New NASA Center

Congress moved. By June 1958 a new NASA was created from the old NACA
(National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics). It united a number of
government research labs that focused on non-military aspects of space
and aeronautical research. The new space agency became operational in
October, and in December counted JPL as one of its brightest stars.
Pickering was presented with a contract that offered three broad
categories of space research: one that would include near-Earth
satellite missions, looking both down at the surface, and out to the
cosmos; a second that would become the manned space flight program; and
a third that would include deep-space missions to explore the solar
system *in situ*. Pickering did not hesitate to grab the deep-space
contract for the Lab. It was one of the most fateful decisions he would
ever make, and one for which we at the Lab will always be in his debt.

## Interesting Web Sites

<http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/pickering.html>

<http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/pickering.html>

<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/facts/jpl.pdf>

<http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/project/explorer.htm>

William Hayward Pickering, Ph.D.---A Brief Biography

William Hayward Pickering was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on
December 24, 1910. After one year at the University of New Zealand, he
entered Caltech in 1929. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in
Electrical Engineering in 1932, the Master of Science degree in Physics
in 1933, and his Doctorate in Physics in 1936, all from Caltech. After
graduation, he joined the Caltech faculty, becoming a full professor of
electrical engineering in 1946. During World War II, Pickering conducted
research on the absorption properties of cosmic rays with Dr. Robert A.
Millikan, and investigated Japanese balloon warfare techniques for the
Army Air Corps.

Pickering was invited to join the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944, on
the basis of his experience in the design and use of telemetering
devices. He was named chief of the Remote Control Section at JPL.
Beginning in 1949, Pickering headed the Corporal and Sergeant missile
programs, and in 1954 he succeeded Louis Dunn as Laboratory director.

In November 1957 JPL and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency were directed
to prepare and orbit an artificial satellite, in the wake of the
launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union, and the failure of the
American Vanguard satellite.

Explorer 1, the first U.S. artificial satellite, was launched on January
31, 1958.

In December 1958 JPL was transferred to the newly created NASA. In
January 1959, JPL was assigned responsibility for the robotic
exploration of the moon and planets. Under Pickering's direction, JPL
supervised the Ranger missions returning the first close-up,
high-resolution pictures of the lunar surface; he also supervised the
Surveyor soft-landers on the Moon; the Mariner missions to Mars and
Venus; and the first gravity-assist mission to Mercury, via Venus. JPL
also designed the Viking Orbiters to Mars and designed and built the
Voyager spacecraft for their mission to the outer planets.

After Pickering's retirement from JPL in 1976, he directed the Research
Institutes of Saudi Arabia's University of Petroleum and Minerals. In
1978 he returned to California and established the Pickering Research
Corporation for space-related projects. In 1983, he formed Lignetics,
Inc., to manufacture wood pellets from wood waste for use in home
heating.

Pickering has received numerous national and international honors, which
include NASA's Distinguished Service Medal, the Prix Galabert of France,
Italy's Order of Merit.

Pickering was also awarded the Robert H. Goddard Trophy from the
National Space Club, the British Interplanetary society's Special Award,
the 1957 James Wyld Award of the American Rocket Society, the 1959 U.S.
Army's Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the 1969 Louis B. Hill
Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the
1968 Arthur Noble award from the City of Pasadena and in 1993 the
inaugural Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Aerospace Prize. Pickering was
featured on the

cover of Time magazine in 1963 and 1965, and was grand Marshall of the
Tournament of Roses Parade in 1963.

Pickering has also been honored by national leaders. In 1975, he was
awarded the National Medal of Science from President Gerald Ford. In
1976, Pickering was made an "Honorary Knight Commander of the Civil
Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" by Queen
Elizabeth, and in 1994 he was awarded the Japan Prize by Emperor
Akihito.