Robert Truax Captain Robert C . Truax ( USN ) ( September 3 , 1917 – September 17 , 2010 ) was a rocket engineer in the United States Navy , and companies such as Aerojet and Truax Engineering , which he founded . Truax was a proponent of low - cost rocket engine and vehicle designs . Life . As a teenager , Truax was inspired by Robert Goddard articles in " Popular Mechanics " magazine to build his own rockets while residing in Alameda , California . From 1936 - 1939 , midshipman Truax tested liquid - fuel rocket motors and published a February 1939 report in Astronautics . In 1938 , he showed a thrust chamber that he had constructed to the British Interplanetary Society and wrote technical reports published by the American Rocket Society . Following two years ' sea duty , first on the USS Enterprise ( CV - 6 ) and then a destroyer , then - Lieutenant Commander Truax worked at the Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis in the Bureau of Aeronautics Ship Installations Division under Commander C . A . Bolster . Truax headed the Navy Development Project ( ensigns R . C . Stiff , J . F . Patton , & W . Schubert and MIT civilian Robertson Youngquist ) , which discovered that some fuels burst into flame spontaneously when brought into contact with nitric acid , leading to the use of aniline + 20 % Furfuryl alcohol for the 1945 WAC Corporal ( the first free - flight rocket to use the fuel ) . By the spring of 1943 , the Truax group had developed a thrust JATO using hypergolic fuel before the introduction of solid fuel JATO units . From 1955 to 1958 , Truax was assigned to the USAF under General Bernard A . Schriever , where Truax and Dr . Adolf Thiel headed the initial design studies and IRBM specifications for the PGM - 17 Thor missile . Truax subsequently worked on the Navy ' s Viking rocket and UGM - 27 Polaris missile . Truax studied the sea launching of rockets such as the Sea Bee and Sea Horse projects . After serving as 1957 American Rocket Society president , Truax retired from the USN in 1959 and headed the Aerojet - General Advanced Development Division and Aerojet ' s Sea Dragon project . Truax Engineering . In 1966 Robert Truax founded Truax Engineering , which studied sea launch concepts similar to the earlier Sea Dragon — the Excalibur , the SEALAR , and the Excalibur S . Truax also designed the Skycycle X - 2 , which he unsuccessfully tested on April 15 , 1972 and June 24 , 1973 , and which Evel Knievel unsuccessfully used at the Snake River Canyon in 1974 . Volksrocket . The X - 3 Volksrocket ( other names : Arriba One , Skycycle X - 3 ) was a reusable space tourism rocket planned by Robert Truax after Evel Knievel provided a $ 1 , 000 research grant for a pilot study . Truax was looking for volunteers with enough money to help fund the effort and who wished to fly aboard his rocket . He got thousands of volunteers , but few of them had the financial resources . Among those who offered some financing and who went through some of his training , were astronauts : Ronald Beller , a pilot from Kentucky , Martin Yahn , Ray Upton , Peruvian - born Daniel J . Correa and Fell Peters , all of southern California . The rocket used surplus components and was tested through 1991 .