[Music] on the outskirts of paris there is an unusual home that has been turned into a museum of sorts it is a place filled with memories letters and electronic paintings all of them awaiting discovery by a larger world they are the expressions of a man who dreamt of exploring the heavens his was a complicated life filled with ironies and contradictions [Music] an american by birth he became a citizen of the world though trained as an engineer he was drawn to the creative arts highly articulate he found it difficult to express his feelings even with those closest to him he was a pacifist who built weapons and a socialist who became a millionaire he set aside personal convictions to help win a world war only to later see his country turn against him and declare him an international fugitive through it all he kept meticulous records hoping to ensure his pioneering role in american rocketry but today he has been largely forgotten few know of his contributions or even his name but from his passion for reaching beyond the boundaries of the earth would emerge the world's premier center for exploring the solar system this is the story of one man's reach for the stars and how his ideas and idealism put him on a collision course with the world it is the story of the american rocketeer [Music] in the fall of 1934 a young college graduate climbed aboard a train in texas and headed west his college professors had chipped in to help buy his train ticket he was now headed for pasadena [Music] california [Music] and orange trees [Music] the young texan who stepped off the train found himself in a land of orange groves mansions parades and one of the world's leading engineering universities the california institute of technology caltech had accepted him into its graduate aviation program [Music] his name was frank molina september 14 1934. dear folks i stayed all day looking over the school and finding a place to stay it is a fine school you can see that it has quality caltech and pasadena were a world away from molina's roots he was a first generation texan born of czech immigrant parents both of whom were musicians frank molina was expected to follow his father's musical footsteps but instead of music the young boy was drawn to science mathematics and art much to his father's dismay he made many cynical remarks about it that i bore very painfully he also i recall belittled my intelligence many times in other matters he was never really brutal about it explicitly but i knew that he carried many disappointments about his boy as he dreamt he should be molina's forceful father expressed not only disappointments but the desire that his son should pursue a military career an expectation at odds with molina's own ambitions [Music] early on he showed signs of a strong independent streak in his senior high school yearbook he declared to the world that he would follow the dictates of his own conscience after high school the cash-strapped molina enrolled at texas a m he majored in mechanical engineering and played trumpet in the aggie band to help pay for his tuition though he did well in his studies he did not fit in with the military culture of the school refusing to curse like the other boys he was subjected to beatings turning inward molina became a voracious writer and reader he kept a detailed journal noting every book that he had ever read believing himself destined for a place in history he encouraged others to safeguard his letters having before only dabbled with drawing he became serious about art and drew self-portraits on his dorm wall he put up depictions of famous figures some were from the past there were world war one generals and the famed aviator charles lindbergh whose solitary flight across the atlantic had only recently electrified the world aviation was pushing the outermost boundaries of technology and it was the place molina intended to make his own mark and to study aviation there was no better place in the world to be than cal tech here was a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and a professor world renowned for his work in aerodynamics who would take molina under his wing dear mr molina i'm very happy to inform you that you have been awarded a wind tunnel assistantship at the institute for the next year covering your tuition of three hundred dollars such work would be at the rate of 80 cents an hour very sincerely yours theodore from carmen theodore von carmen was considered an undisputed genius a fact not lost to him when he ranked the greatest scientists of all time sir isaac newton was at the top for having had six original ideas next came einstein whom von carmen credited with having had four great ideas in my case i have had three great ideas maybe more yes perhaps three and a half great ideas von carmen was as sociable as he was intelligent he loved to smoke cigars drink bourbon out of tall glasses and flirt with beautiful women his home in pasadena was the site of apparently remarkable dinner parties where he drew intellectuals and other cultured figures from the los angeles area and seems to have been a rather remarkable kind of salon that went on for a number of years under his aegis and that of his sister and his mother besides the famous von carmen often invited his brightest students to his home for dinner and conversation he was like a mother hen with his chicks around him these were all young men whom he loved and felt very close to he was a mentor to all of them he was simply wonderful [Music] over time von carmen and molina became especially close the hungarian professor helped introduce his graduate student to a larger world and a dizzying swirl of subjects all of which molina shared in his weekly letter to his parents my brain is going round and round with airplanes socialism capitalism logic napoleon opera and thermodynamics our slide rules are being worn out i am certainly forced to learn a lot about airplanes as molina's letter home hinted he was becoming intensely interested in politics and how to solve the great depression it was the era of roosevelt's new deal and socialism if not communism seemed to offer solutions for the stricken american economy [Music] in the 1930s he is not unlike a lot of intellectuals attracted to to marxism and learning a little bit about a sense of social and economic justice and how they might be able to achieve those and it's important to understand that in that era marxism did not necessarily have the broad negative connotations that it would gain during the cold war dear folks if the depression continues and war doesn't break out perhaps we will have some form of socialism even before some people think there is plenty of reason for the rich class to be afraid don't worry about me getting into politics that is unavoidable there were so many terrible things happening in this country with the depression so this was not a rare thing it's a great deal that was being talked about and particularly among people like that you had at caltech whose minds were very active and very bright of course they would be looking into this there's no question about it many political discussions that molina attended took place at the home of caltech research assistant sydney weinbaum the russian-born wine bomb was a formidable intellectual he was a theoretical physicist a talented pianist and a master of chess he was also the head of the pasadena branch of the communist party in the years to come molina's friendship with wine bomb would have far-reaching consequences [Music] i'm happy my cows have flown away a new day with nothing enjoying let's dance together though politically brash frank molina was no firebrand revolutionary his letters home quickly jumped from politics to opera to the aggie football team to a budding social life dear folks last night i went to a dance at the athenian i had a good dancing partner so i enjoyed the evening very much hope you get to see the athenaeum someday as it is really a beautiful place everything is kept as nearly as perfect as you can imagine there was yet another topic swirling in molina's mind might rocketry be worth pursuing as a career [Music] so far as respectable scientists were concerned rocketry was really buck rogers stuff [Music] no one wanting to advance their career in academia was thinking seriously of becoming a rocket scientist in fact the words rocket and scientist had yet to have been joined together as a respectable concept it was very much an amateur sort of thing and very much a fringe kind of thing there was a widely used astronomy textbook published in the early 1930s which said that rocket flight was impossible it was something that was really not even on the fringes even beyond the fringes of respectable science [Music] molina's interest in rockets might have been a passing whimsy had not two young men approached him with an intriguing proposal might the three of them these two strangers asked team up and build rockets their names were ed forman and john whiteside's parsons they had been friends since meeting on a schoolyard neither possessed a college degree but what they lacked in their education they more than made up for in enthusiasm apparently it was just electricity they shared this dream of building high altitude rockets and my dad must have been already thinking about it seriously and so it was just electric [Music] foreman was a mechanic who knew how to bend metal into rocket casings parsons was a chemist who could fill those casings with rocket fuel what they needed was the scientific discipline molina could provide and the sponsorship of a caltech professor von carmen with an affinity for the unorthodox gave the project his blessing but there were conditions they could make use of his laboratory but only in off hours and they would have to raise their own funds i was immediately captivated by the earnestness and the enthusiasm of these young men most young people are quite serious about their dreams so this in itself was not what interested me it was the unusually strong background and drive of these young rocketeers parsons and foreman told me that their backyards in pasadena were pockmarked from the effects of rocket explosions foreman and molina would never be close but molina and parsons found their interests meshed beyond rockets there were common interests in music and literature years later molina summed up parsons as rather exotic of the cultist type which of course was not unusual in california it was a clever but obscuring description of parsons who was in fact a practitioner of black magic and the occult parsons love to recite pagan poetry to the sky while stamping his feet he stood six foot one with dark wavy hair a small mustache and penetrating black eyes which appealed to the ladies when parsons wasn't working with explosives he headed a local chapter of a religious sect the membership was sworn to obey the law there is no law beyond do what thou wilt do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law i think my father went to some of those parties which were pretty wild but then you know i grew up in the 60s when parties were pretty wild as students certainly my dad had no interest in astrology or no interest in mysticism and so this was really very far from his view of the world and what made it tick and yet it was something that came with the package that must have been an innate part of my dad's personality was a tolerance for bright people with strange habits they made for an odd trio but they were bound together by their desire to build rockets that could reach into space for months they sketched out blueprint drawings and then hammered them into real hardware finally they were ready for their first test parsons and foreman accustomed to the thrill of launching their rockets up into the sky found that molina demanded that the first test should simply measure the rocket's thrust to do so the motor was inverted with the exhaust nozzle pointing straight up this rocket engine was going nowhere or so they thought as the sun rose on saturday halloween day 1936 molina parsons foreman and a handful of caltech students and supporters set out for the arroyo seiko a deserted mountain wash near the pasadena rose bowl they assembled their rocket engine connected the pressure tanks then stacked sandbags to protect themselves from a possible explosion as the day wore on they took a break from their physical exertions [Music] the moment captured on camera is known today as the nativity scene the first rocket experiment by the founders of what would become the jet propulsion laboratory what was kind of surprising also is that they brought cameras along so you know they had no doubt that they were doing something important and so they wanted it documented by the early afternoon molina and parsons had the rocket motor ready for testing crouching behind sandbags they expected to hear a roar instead there was the disappointing sound of hissing air from a loose hose the second and third attempts netted the same result by now fuel had leaked all around the test area but a fourth try was made this time the rocket motor caught fire but not in the way intended very many things happen that will teach us what to do next time the most excitement took place in the last shot when the oxygen hose for some reason ignited and swung around on the ground 40 feet from us we all tore out across the country the rocket motor tests in the months that followed ebbed and flowed leaving the three men more often than not despondent and fissures between molina and his two partners began forming parsons and foreman were impatient to launch a rocket while molina demanded more tests knowing much could be gleaned through scientific calculations requiring no hardware at all molina added to the group a brilliant chinese graduate student named shui shen qian qian had come to the united states on a scholarship he was viewed as a human calculator who preferred to communicate through the language of equations his ambition he once declared was nothing short of going to the moon despite the addition of qien to the team the lack of funding threatened to put a halt to the whole effort attempts to join forces with the most well-known u.s rocket pioneer robert goddard were rebuffed much to von carmen's displeasure goddard it was said was the first man to fire a liquid rocket goddard's rocket reached an altitude of 42 feet however interesting this is historically i have never equated the characteristic of being first with being the greatest naturally we at caltech wanted as much information as we could get from goddard for our mutual benefit but goddard believed in secrecy there is no direct line from goddard to present-day rocketry he is on a branch that died [Music] now desperate for money parsons and molina began writing a science fiction treatment they hoped to sell as a movie script or novel and of course that film script turns out to be eerily anticipatory the storyline involves a group of liberal rocket researchers and their struggles with fascist capitalists one of the characters who resembles jack parsons is killed in a rocket explosion another character clearly qian returns to china when the us government fails to come to his aid [Music] and the character based on frank molina plays out his part trying to keep their rocket research from falling into the hands of nazis the draft of the script was shopped around the studios but there were no takers for such an unrealistic plot [Music] rockets politics and classwork weren't all that were occupying molina's time [Music] in july of 1938 he met a young woman who aspired to be an artist her name was lillian darkore [Music] we started talking and frank began to ask me questions as people do when they first meet you know and it was just a very lovely evening very very simple and we danced a great deal and that was it and we spent the summer that way playing a little tennis frank also took us to do archery which i had never done and we went to the beach we did all the things that young people do [Music] just 10 weeks after meeting lillian molina made a major announcement to his parents dear folks lillian and i are happy to announce that we have become engaged we will probably not marry before next june i am sure that you will love her as much as i do as she is pretty serious and a hard worker it was a whirlwind romance to which molina brought an unusual sense of urgency getting married molina confided to his fiancee was part of his five-year plan i think he had everything under control he had it compartmentalized and he tried to live by that he had a good sense of humor you know when he let it go i always felt that it was like being held back a little bit it would have been so nice if he could have just you know let it let it explode many tell me that i am secretive something i can't understand i have always thought my actions were as transparent as could be perhaps too much so at times as their wedding date neared lillian began to have doubts i felt the distance between us always i didn't like that and i kept telling myself it was me that i was just being foolishly romantic and too young but i was a little bit aware of it then lillian's parents smitten with molina encouraged their daughter to go ahead with the marriage despite her doubts she was all of 19 years old marriage did little to slow down molina's interest in rockets he shared very little of his work with his young bride who soon found herself alone as her husband and his colleagues worked late into the evenings i would come home from art school i would go do the marketing cook something awful because i didn't know how to cook in those days i think i was responsible for frank's bad stomach and then they would come over and i could hear all the voices and the arguing and no yes and let's do this and let's do that this went on almost every night the group continued to expand as did the project's reputation but not for the better having been provided space in the basement of a caltech building the rocketeers chemical brews were raising eyebrows and an awful stench one of the liquids we are using gives off a very toxic gas that is heavier than air if there were any rats in the building they've probably left when toxic gases weren't being released unintended explosions were sometimes heard echoing through an otherwise tranquil campus one unexpected blast sent a piece of steel hurtling through the air just minutes earlier molina had been standing directly in the projectile's path [Music] dear folks i left about half an hour before the occurrence so that parsons and foreman were alone neither of them was hurt fortunately there will probably be very little financial loss as the institute carries insurance on all laboratory equipment [Music] the rocketeers began being referred to throughout the campus as the suicide squad it ruined our reputations one member of the group recalled our name was mud in 1938 europe was verging on war military planners in the united states fanned out to universities across the country searching for new technologies should the country be drawn into the conflict one stop was at caltech dear folks a big shot from the army ordinance division was here today he told of the army's experience with rockets and thought there was little possibility of using them for military purposes i silently rejoiced i have no doubt that a war will break out sooner or later but i can't get very enthusiastic over making rockets for murdering purposes [Music] though the army's ordnance department passed on rockets hap arnold the general in charge of the army's air force saw possibilities arnold was acquainted with von carmen and was intrigued by what the professor had to say about his students rocket project hap arnold very perceptively understood the possibilities that rocketry would have for the military perhaps he saw that simply at extension of ordinance or whatever it was he sensed that there was something that could result here he was also close to von carmen and von carmen probably was able to whisper something to him that was persuasive in some way but it's that early army air force funding that really takes the early jpl group from being basically a student research project assisted by these rather kooky amateurs and turns it into a serious undertaking general arnold was interested in getting planes especially bombers quickly into the skies on shorter runways and he thought rockets might help under von carmen's signature molina prepared a proposal for the army's consideration [Music] given the stigma associated with rockets that word was avoided in favor of jet propulsion what pleased me most was that uncle sam was going to supply money to help our boys with their rocket experiments so they would no longer have to dip into their own pockets the first contract was for one thousand dollars it was only the beginning a second grant in july of 1939 was for 10 times that amount when hitler invaded poland money began to gush in needing more space and no longer welcomed at cal tech a strip of land was leased in the arroyo the site of the very first rocket motor tests a dozen engineers were hired soon tin shacks began to appear though some workers had to use their automobiles as offices with the army's money came a need not only for expansion but official titles von karman was named director of the jet propulsion project parsons was put in charge of propellant development and foreman was made head of the machine shop day-to-day operations were run by molina who was named chief engineer construction has started on the shacks for the rocket station we have plenty of pressure on us to produce something quick perhaps we will be lucky and get some gadget to work but this isn't the type of problem that can be solved on order i need a good physicist foreman and parsons are all right for some type of work sometimes they're like inventors in the worst sense of the word in the summer the corrugated shacks were as hot as an oven with rockets being fired off there was a constant dread of setting off a brush fire that would spread deep into the san gabriel mountains [Music] in winter there was no heat and rain rushing down from the mountains would flood the arroyo threatening to wash away the entire encampment the atmosphere was decidedly informal one day when molina showed up for work wearing a suit a worker made a fashion statement by taking scissors and cutting his tie in two on a more serious occasion a distraught employee fed up with growing bureaucracy threatened molina with an axe they're starting under very primitive conditions here so tension is bound to flare attracting people to the early jpo was not so easy because rocketry still had that taint of not being quite respectable it wasn't clear where it was going was there a future and so it took a lot of persuasion to get people to be involved at that point you're really making a bet on your future in a lot of ways one phd recruit arrived at the site after a bumpy ride in on the dirt road and uttered my god what have i gotten into but the work went on the team first intended to build a solid rocket so many explosives experts believe we were embarking on a wild goose chase i remember well the repeated and occasionally unnerving explosion of parsons rockets i began to wonder whether our original idea was practical and i continue to listen to more explosions by now the government had decided that the work was to be classified there would be security checks made on everyone and chen a foreign national was refused a clearance a decision that left molina fuming this secret business is very childish everything now is very confidential and we have to suspect spies under every piece of paper but the war was nearing in early 1941 an intelligence report warned that germany was also trying to lift airplanes off the ground by using rockets the news further underscored the seriousness of their research [Music] in august they believed they were ready for their first test their modest plan called for mounting six canisters called jet assisted takeoff rockets or jatos to the smallest plane they could find a 753 pound aircraft called an air coop one of von carmen's graduate students army lieutenant homer boucher volunteered to be the pilot a week or so before the flight boucher came down to the arroyo seco to see how the rockets were working parsons had set up a packet of rockets which simulated the rack on the plane as the group gathered to watch from a safe vantage point he ran through a brief countdown and pushed the firing button explosions occurred like on the 4th of july and nozzles flew off in all directions it could not have been worse parsons came to realize the longer the rockets were stored the greater the odds of an explosion but no one knew why [Music] the first static rocket test was conducted with the plane secured to the tarmac a nozzle on one of the jatos blew off tearing a hole in the tail of the plane at least one of the rocketeers joked it isn't a big hole i must express my admiration for boucher's courage and faith for he did not give up his agreement to go ahead with the tests there's a certain amount of gallows humor about all this looking at the small hole and fuselage for one of the tests they take off the propeller paste one of the safety posters that was around during the war over where the propeller had been i think there is always a sense that you're living on the edge a bit in these situations [Music] a few days later on august 12 1941 with carmen and molina overseeing preparations six freshly made jatos were mounted underneath the wings of the light plane as bouchet climbed into the air coop that day i am sure we all shared a certain tingle of mounting excitement we knew that this test was vital to convince the air corps that our rockets worked but were there any other unknowns that we hadn't considered would there be troubles with the airplane [Music] as the plane rolled down the field and gathered momentum he kicked the ignition switch smoke billowed out as the rocket ignited the plane shot off as if released from a slingshot none of us had ever seen a plane climb at such a steep angle to emphasize the achievement they rolled the film camera again and had two planes take to the skies one powered by jato rockets the other only propeller driven the strapped on jatos had cut the distance needed to take to the air almost in half the team was ecstatic but because the work was now classified there were no public celebrations molina could only hint of the accomplishment in a letter home we have had success this week with our rocket project that exceeded our highest expectation wish i could tell you more about it the flight test was a major step forward but the problem of the short shelf life of the fuel continued to hamper them after a few days of storage the canisters were more likely to explode than fire off but in a moment of insight parsons tossed out some of the traditional ingredients of black powder in favor of an unusual combination of asphalt and potassium perchlorate the storage problem was solved jack parsons solid fuel concoction would prove to be one of the most important rocket science advances of the 20th century [Music] witnessed this morning's a distant view a brief people battle off pearl harbor and a severe bombing of pearl harbor by enemy planes undoubtedly japanese dear folks we got up this morning and turned on the radio to listen to the symphony concert instead we heard the first news of the attack on hawaii and manila by the japanese fascists that morning is etched in your mind you know you never forget it frank was sitting in the one arm chair in the living room that we had he was looking at some papers and i was on the floor kind of leaning against the chair with the newspaper when this came on the announcement that pearl harbor had been attacked that's where we were and of course we were both in shock with this here in southern california all servicemen are called from leads the police and firemen air raid personnel are all called to their posts the whole state of affairs seems rather unreal with the united states entry into world war ii the work of the rocketeers took on a wartime urgency and they were given new challenges to research the team was now experimenting with liquid propellants in charge of that effort was martin summerfield molina's former caltech roommate summerfield was given what seemed an impossible assignment building a rocket engine that could deliver a thousand pounds of thrust for at least a minute enough to help lift a twenty thousand pound bomber into the sky some speculated it would require an engine the size of a house but summerfield went to work designing an engine employing a small gas chamber by april of 1942 the problem seemed to have been solved as a bomber called the havoc was pulled out of the hangar and outfitted with liquid jet engines given the possibility of an explosion that would ignite the liquid propellants and doom the plane only two men were allowed on board the pilot and an operator stationed in the rear whose job was to ignite the rockets [Music] the entire team including von carmen molina and parsons stood and watched as the bomber taxied into position for takeoff [Music] the engines revved up the rockets ignited and suddenly the bomber took off with a roar almost straight up as smoke billowed forth the plane continued to rise as though scooped up by a sudden draft it was a wonderful sight and the beginning of practical rocketry in the united states was as excited as von carmen with the test and rushed out to congratulate the two-man crew after they safely landed soon afterwards he shared with his wife his pride in the accomplishment i have not written to you for some time mainly because of the pressure of work during the past hectic two weeks the most important fact is that this weekend the outlook for the future is the brightest it has ever been we have something that really works and we should be able to help give the fascist hell perhaps anticipating success just a few days before the first bomber test flight molina came forth with a decidedly capitalist proposal with the rocket work expanding why not molina proposed to the core team incorporate and sell mass-produced versions of their rocket to the us government von carmen agreed and he was immediately named president of a company they named aerojet parsons foreman and summerfield were made vice presidents molina was put in charge of managing the money for what looked to be a fly-by-night seat of your pants operation i have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off everything is going so fast around me that it's bewildering the company will either be a wonderful success or a glorious flop there won't be any in between the lines of authority between aerojet and caltech were vague but no one had the time to worry about overlaps in wartime parsons and foreman moved over to the new company von carmen who was officially in charge was spending more of his time in washington which left molina to run both operations he found running a growing business and dealing with government red tape not to his liking we have come across the most foolishness incompetence helplessness ignorance and stubbornness that you can possibly imagine what a mess we ran into i have lost my temper so many times that i have no temper left there were other problems parsons interest in the occult was deepening and rumors of his activities were spreading to the press molina's wife lillian became so alarmed that she wrote to her husband warning of the dangers of continuing to associate with parsons dear frank the most disconcerting thing i've heard this week is a story concerning friend parsons it seems that certain people are not taking his cult as lightly as you are the story goes further in as much as the fbi is on their trail because they are sure there is some honest-to-god leak in the whole organization i think you and anyone else in erijet who is not of their ilk is in serious danger lillian i think that the suicide squad was a pretty strange group of characters i assumed that as the war effort started wrapping up files on all these people right and anybody that that started having a profile that was a little bit strange they would have started investigating persons file must have been really interesting i mean they were busy looking at the parties he was holding trying to figure out what was going on there and certainly you know given my father's situation very quickly he must have gotten a lot of attention molina had no way of knowing it but his political activities in the late 1930s had come to the personal attention of the fbi's director j edgar hoover hoover convinced molina was a member of the communist party based on the report of an informant ordered his agents to find the proof a review of the report fails to reflect definite information that the subject is a member of the communist party it is suggested that further efforts be made by your office to determine whether subject is actually a communist party member in order that additional consideration may be given to the preparation of a security index card concerning him [Music] what's now known from released fbi files is that molina had been of interest to the bureau as early as 1942 with a dozen informants having provided information about him one of them told of molina having attended and hosted communist party meetings prior to america's entry into world war ii after two years of investigative work the fbi's los angeles office reported back to a disappointed hoover that their investigation failed to indicate that molina was actually a member of the communist party the memo went on to recommend molina not be placed on a list of security risks there the matter rested but was not forgotten whatever suspicions the fbi may have had about molina and others they did not act upon them for when top secret reports arrived with the news that the nazis were building ballistic missiles the talents of the rocketeers were needed more than ever the world's first missile arms race was about to get underway in july of 1943 theodore von carmen was shown a series of top-secret photographs they were pictures of what looked like ramps being constructed off the coast of german-occupied france what the army wanted to know could they be when carmen gets some super secret photographs probably through cap arnold what looked like these giant ski slopes and they want to know what's going on here what does this look like to you when carmen analyzes it and decides that probably the germans have a rocket program underway the v-1 the v stood for vengeance weapon was an early cruise missile first used in june 1944 over 8 000 of these subsonic buzz bombs were launched against england and [Music] holland but even more alarming reports began to arrive all pointing to a rocket far outstripping anything being undertaken by the allies it was the v2 the world's first long-range ballistic missile flying at supersonic speeds the v-2 gave no warning was invulnerable to counter-attack and could take out an entire city block with its one-ton warhead [Music] the u.s army wanted its own v-2 and looked to the pasadena rocketeers to deliver it frank molina was given the assignment of drawing up the proposal we may have a big blank canvas facing us in research since there is a probability that the new program from washington will come through i feel a little frightened in tackling such a big job and dr von carmen is also hesitant no final decisions have been made so that i do not know exactly where we stand [Music] molina quickly turned to his caltech colleague shui shin chen in the past chen had been excluded from working on secret government projects due to his foreign status but that concern was discarded given the news of the v2 and the need for his calculating skills the proposal written by molina and tien with von carmen's name prominently attached called for a crash american rocket program issued on november 20th 1943 the report carried the name of jpl one the first time the words jet propulsion laboratory were ever used in combination [Music] the plan was quickly accepted and suddenly millions of dollars were made available to the one-time cash-strapped rocketeers but rather than rejoicing frank molina was having misgivings that he shared with his wife dearest sweetheart the past few days i have been thinking about the future trying to formulate a post-war plan for myself and dreaming about the two of us i have learned on this trip that the culmination of my efforts with many others in pasadena will probably be a permanent jet propulsion laboratory at cal tech i still have a part to play mainly at cal tech in trying to start the jp lab on its way then i'm going back to school for a year or two to study human beings their ways and how they live together i am convinced that i must do something like this for i would rather be a failure in that sphere of human endeavor than a recognized success at the end of my life in the field i am now working in i think it was very much on his mind that all the work he was doing was really for killing people in the end that's what it was for he was very disturbed about that because he was a humanitarian i mean he was a great idealist i think and i think he had difficulty oh how would i say matching his life with what he really thought life should be so i would ask him but what can you do what can we do about it what do you have any ideas you can't stop what you're doing he said no i can't i have to go on with this so i said so do it you know at least that you're helping the war effort this is very worthwhile and we would leave it like that and he had made his peace with i guess what he considered a compromise that's all i can say but i think it was very hard for him molina who had been an officer in the army reserve going back to his texas a m days was sent to london and france to witness firsthand the destructive power of the v-2 and to see what might be gleaned from bits of the rockets that survived impact sunday i got into uniform for the first time in 10 years i had to buy it here and considering everything it fits fairly well since i am here as a technical representative therefore wear no officer insignia but do wear an officer's uniform the gis have to salute me when i pass them some do some don't and some get their arm halfway up before deciding against it i have had some good laughs that was what he wrote to his parents but to lillian he confided more i still haven't been able to rid myself of that subconscious feeling of anticipating flying bombs or v2 rockets sailing through the air one of them with my number on it i went to bed very early this evening and i had a very vivid dream just before midnight as you know there is one characteristic that i have fought against and that is an unreasonable fear of physical pain not so much for myself but when it happens to others i know there must be some suppressed fear that gives rise to these reactions as i think back i am conscious of a great fear of my father who was very impatient with me if i could not carry out his desires as you know he was at one time a butcher and i shied away from that business those were molina's tortured thoughts at night during the day he moved ahead with creating a missile he was reluctant to build [Music] he's constantly ringing his hands about how this is oh he just hates doing this and and building things that are going to kill people and break things is not what he really wants to do and it's not what he's about and he always comes back at the end of this after he has this soul-searching exercise to say but you know we have to defeat the nazis we must win this war and if we don't it's going to be in new dark ages on earth dear folks i got back to pasadena on a b-17 bomber i am gradually getting used to the absence of explosions i will have a new title something like acting director of the jet propulsion laboratory at cal tech molina was by now managing an evolving operation that had moved beyond jatos to rockets [Music] the jplers named their first missile the private a the rocket's modest rank was fitting given its small size the engine was a jato fitted with a cone head and four fins serving as flight stabilizers [Music] to achieve liftoff the private required a small launch tower with guide rails and a booster stage containing four smaller solid rockets [Music] the brainchild of molina and chen the private a exceeded their expectations by reaching a flight distance of over 10 miles when first launched in december 1944 at camp irvin in the mojave desert [Music] emboldened by the private a's success wings were added in hopes of increasing the rockets range the winged private was named private f the first of 17 rounds were shot off at fort bliss texas beginning on april fool's day 1945.

[Music] the rockets blasted out of the launcher as planned but then promptly corkscrewed into the ground the letter f the joke went stood for either failure or fiasco [Music] locating the errant rockets in the desert was an adventure of its own given the truncated flight paths the fuel was not always entirely consumed the rocket was now an unexploded bomb the hunting expeditions included not only tracking down the privates but in a moment of levity captured on film putting them out of their misery [Music] as the war was ending in europe theodore von carmen and shui shin chin also donned u.s officer uniforms von carmen was given the simulated rank of a general then a colonel they traveled to germany to see firsthand the technologies of the nazi war machine von carmen who had once lived studied and worked in germany was shocked by what he saw i was deep in a country which i had once believed was the fulcrum of world science [Music] now it was rubble abandoned machinery and dull spiritless faces along the road [Music] reminders of the deep tragedy that had occurred because of the nazi urge to war i thought to myself how much misery had been brought to a highly civilized people by stupidity ignorance and distortion of truth as the german army collapsed von karman and chen fanned out in different directions searching for german engineers and scientists and the machines they had built von carmen found more than he had bargained for we went on to nordhausen which lies in the hearts mountains here work on v2 rockets had been carried out the visit proved to be one of the most ghastly experiences i ever had the nazis had developed a fiendish scheme of executing their prisoners by controlled starvation this was the most horrible thing i had yet heard of [Music] a perversion of science beyond anyone's nightmarish imagination twenty thousand inmates died at nordhausen from starvation and being worked to death the v2 was the creation of nazi party member werner von braun von braun was not responsible for the nordhausen facility where his v2 was mass produced by slave labor but he knew what took place there at the war's end in europe von braun and members of his team surrendered to the american army jen was among the first to interrogate him eventually the army secretly moved these spoils of war to the united states to learn more about their knowledge of rockets at the same time entirely intact v2s captured by the us army were also making their way back to the united states some of them came to jpl during the weekend we received two complete v2 rockets they came on open flat cars lots of people in pasadena came to the railroad station to see them i found them very interesting after hearing them land in london molina had been unscathed by v2s raining down on london during his time there but in the years to come he would become a casualty of the v2 in a different way for in a twist of fates it would be verner von braun and his german v2 team not frank molina and his pasadena rocketeers who would be chosen to lead the u.s rocket program on july 16 1945 the first atomic bomb was detonated at a new mexico test site named trinity three weeks later the united states dropped atomic bombs on the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki in a matter of days japan surrendered world war ii was over [Music] august 23 1945. dear folks it is a long time since i have written to you so many things have happened in the last 10 days the end of the war still does not appear a reality but i guess it is true the development of atomic energy is here and no one knows for sure what it means except that another war might be worse than the last one if that is possible you asked if i had anything to do with the atomic bomb no i did not although many of us knew that that work was going on and that whoever succeeded would probably win the war as you know i have never been convinced that what i was doing the past 10 years was right at least in my own mind technical developments are now so far ahead of other human arrangements it appears nonsensical for one who sees the gap to make it even wider molina was wrestling with his conscience because he knew that the next generation of missiles he was helping to create would carry atomic warheads a follow-on to the private rocket was already underway molina also proposed another missile known as the wac corporal this liquid-fueled rocket molina thought could be used for science rather than military purposes whack was shorthand for without attitude control a way of indicating the missile had no guidance system the wac corporal's increased range required a remote testing site the spot chosen was white sands new mexico white sands was chosen for this kind of experimentation because it was remote it's very much a kind of roughing it barracks type environment we are near the spot that the first atomic bomb was set off and we will probably have a look at the crater from the air before we leave we are very comfortable the food is fine and we should have a pleasant time provided we do not have too many technical difficulties with our baby white sands proving grounds october 11th 1945. dearest sweetheart today was the day and i don't think i will ever forget it [Music] [Music] our little lady performed beautifully on her maiden flight [Music] tomorrow night we plan to celebrate juarez [Music] the lady has one bad habit which we have not been able to cure in the overall picture however she is mighty good and we think that we will be able to get her to do one more stunt before our program is completed i will enjoy telling you about her someday she is very pretty and up to now we love her dearly give everyone my regards all my love frank molina was ecstatic because his wac corporal the world's first sounding rocket reached an altitude of 235 000 feet the highest any human-made object had ever reached it was what rocketeers had always dreamed of achieving reaching the very fringes of space of the original group molina was the only one to witness the achievement his mentor theodore von carmen was in such demand by the pentagon that he had all but set up permanent residence in washington jack parsons and ed forman had cashed in their aerojet stock and moved on even chen was gone having relocated to mit molina was alone in another way even as he celebrated the heights of success of his little lady his personal life was coming apart the fbi was once again investigating him while he was away on a trip his wife was warned by a friend that the fbi was searching the pasadena homes of people suspected of communist party activity and that molina was next on the list [Music] when i got home that evening the house had indeed been broken into and things on frank's dest had been rummaged around drawers had been opened someone had been through the whole place it was just chaos tired of being alone fearful of the fbi and no longer sure of whom she was lillian told molina she wanted out of the marriage she left pasadena and moved to new york to pursue her career as an artist this must have been absolutely awful for frank i mean for me to do that at that time was terrible here i am leaving him just at the worst time in his life you know but i knew i had to get out of there i just had had it had enough i couldn't i couldn't take it anymore woman of my heart i cannot sleep i cannot think my heart is sorely bent why must humans suffer as i am suffering and i know that you have suffered more it is only when one is alone that one realizes the things that really matter and still i am afraid that tomorrow the gears will enmesh me and somehow i i don't care where they carry me and then again i do and you do for we were born to fight for the worthwhile i have torn myself apart and tried to look in my darkest corners i have made mistakes and have eaten bitter fruit for them as you read the news release on the rocket i wondered if you experienced the sensation of at least being the midwife to the creature whose father i am called i know you are as happy as i am that the good success was achieved new york city april 1 1946 dear frank you failed to see so many things with any degree of common sense you could not expect me to read of your success and the success of the little lady without me having pride and feeling part in all of it that has passed and i can only tell you that i sweated it through in more ways than you realize that is of no importance in itself for i say truthfully that the reports i read of your success made me very happy and made me know that it was all to some very good purpose lillian [Music] dear lillian i appreciate the kind words about me but i have finally caught hold of the idea that i can't force you to love me i wish it had been possible happy landings on your flight love [Music] frank [Music] molina's marriage was over he believed he was being pursued by the fbi and the more molina learned in pentagon meetings about how missiles would be put to use in a future nuclear war the more conflicted he became about the purpose of his work the war plans molina later wrote were a form of national insanity dear folks i have notified the institute that i want a year leave of absence what i really want to do i am not at all certain the way the world looks now too many people are getting ready for world war iii but he certainly talks about how upset he was that all the people around him were preparing for the third world war right and so from the military perspective as soon as the atom bombs were successfully developed the next problem was to how to put them on missiles and and that that just made him sick to his stomach seeking answers he traveled to princeton to meet albert einstein einstein was in very good humor and talked and listened for an hour he is like almost all scientists disturbed over the hysteria that is current in the u.s he said all of us in international organizations must have courage to fight for real issues in the spring of 1947 molina boarded the queen elizabeth bound for france and a new career working for the united nations education scientific and cultural organization or unesco molina's role there was to help scientists from around the globe find ways of collaborating just as at cal tech and rockets i have to provide leadership and push there is much to be done if we are going to be at all effective in stopping another war i am now in a much better position to grasp things and in a little longer i will be really able to fight for some ideas a year into his job he met a young british woman marjorie duckworth in 1949 they married shortly after their wedding molina journeyed with his bride to the united states just as a political bombshell exploded over pasadena and the nation former cal tech student frank oppenheimer brought before the house committee on un-american activities testified that he had been an active member of the pasadena chapter of the communist party professional unit 122 what made oppenheimer's testimony of such tremendous interest was his brother robert oppenheimer the physicist who led the scientific effort to build the first atomic bomb during his testimony frank oppenheimer was pressed to name other members of unit 122. among the names inquired about was frank molina oppenheimer refused to implicate others but molina's name was mentioned so often that clearly he was of special interest to the committee but why [Music] a memo by j edgar hoover written just days before oppenheimer's appearance before the un-american activities committee provides one possible answer a complete and thorough review of your files should be made particularly the information reflecting molina's possible connection with the loss of certain documents and blueprints relating to the wac corporal based on information from an informant known as t1 hoover suspected someone had passed to the french government a complete set of classified information on the wac corporal rocket the loss of these documents t1 suggested had happened during the time of molina's directorship of jpl the informant went on to raise concerns about others who had or were still working at jpl they included martin summerfield sydney weinbaum and shui shin chen there was hysteria throughout the country it was inevitable that attention would be turned to caltech the little california institution with a reputation of harboring many odd independent scientists martin summerfield security clearance was revoked along with his ability to be involved in government projects molina's close friend sydney weinbaum lost his job at jpl weinbaum was another prime suspect in the alleged loss of whack corporal documents to the french for a while the fbi considered developing weinbaum into a double agent but ultimately he was brought to trial charged with perjury for denying his communist party membership he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison chen who had returned to caltech after a stint at mit was also targeted in september as weinbaum's trial was underway chen was arrested in front of his family and held for two weeks the charge that he too had lied about membership in the communist party jen's security clearance was revoked he was allowed to teach at caltech but was kept under constant surveillance for the next five years that was when enough time had passed u.s authorities hoped to make his knowledge of missiles less than state of the art only then was chen allowed to leave the united states the deportation of qin one u.s government official later said was the stupidest thing this country ever did how could this tragedy for america have come about his story is a strange one i think it holds important lessons for all of us on the problems of science and politics and simple human justice i am not opposed to reasonable security but i must say that governments often pass foolish and harmful laws in this area even von carmen did not avoid the red scare of the fifties von carmen called the fbi investigation of him an inexcusable insult no charges were ever pressed against him all of these events frank molina watched unfold from paris out of hoover's reach he filed away newspaper clippings of his friends as they fell to the red scare unable to build a viable case that molina had been involved in espionage the u.s state department refused to renew molina's passport [Music] my father applied for political refugee status in england repeatedly was turned down they were interviewed a number of times with by the french secret service um and my mother always used to tell the story later about how she got to know the secret service agents so well that she'd take them coffee they were sitting in a car at the end of the road watching who was coming in and out of our house she'd give them coffee on the way to pick up her bread in the morning that must have been a pretty frightening time i mean they didn't know what was going to come down next they didn't know whether the french were going to decide to turn them over to the americans other pressures were brought to bear president harry truman issued an executive order its purpose to root out american subversives working for the united nations the order required u.s citizens to disclose whether they had ever been party of any activity considered subversive rather than submit to the inquiry molina resigned from unesco [Music] news of molina's resignation was immediately transmitted to the fbi a warrant for molina's arrest was issued and he was secretly declared a fugitive but knowing the case against molina was still weak hoover again pressured his agents the u.s attorney in los angeles has indicated that the government's case against the subject is not a strong one if it has not already been done this case should be assigned to an experienced agent who has the desire the willingness the aggressiveness and the ability to get out and dig for additional evidence of the subject's past communist party membership but at the end of march the u.s justice system had had enough inasmuch as the bureau has corresponded with the department on a number of cases regarding the prosecution of the subject it is recommended that the matter not be again called to the department's attention the case against frank molina was over [Music] america's rocketeers were scattered by the winds of the red scare chen arrived in china and quickly went to work building china's missile program virtually from scratch while he may not have been a communist when he arrived in china three years after his return he joined the party revered as the father of modern chinese rocketry he lived to see chinese astronauts orbiting the earth he died at the age of 97 on october 31st 2009 he outlived all of his fellow rocketeers after leaving jpl and aerojet jack parsons became more deeply involved in cult activities even as he continued to experiment with explosives he died in june 1952 following an explosion at his home laboratory he was 37 years old in honor of his achievements the international astronomical union named a crater on the moon after him a crater on the far side of the moon ed forman one of the three original rocketeers lived a far more conventional life after leaving aerojet he went to work for another aerospace company in northern california he died in 1973 [Music] martin summerfield's association with professional unit 122 cost him his security clearance he became a professor at princeton university he died in 1996. sydney weinbaum imprisoned for perjury served three years of a four-year sentence with his science career destroyed he found a job in the garment business about his life he once said i can't complain he died at the age of 93. frank molina's first wife lillian wonderman lived out her dream of being an artist in new york where she still lives frank molina without a passport without a job and with a warrant sworn out for his arrest might have seemed in a precarious place in 1953 but he had held on to his aerojet stock and the stock made him independently wealthy the man accused of being a communist became a millionaire as a result of his capitalist endeavors it's a tremendous irony that he's the one who didn't sell his stock it enables him to lead a very comfortable life and gives him the freedom to become an artist frank molina goes on to have a successful career as a kinetic artist really bringing together i suppose you could say the right and left sides of the brain and it makes some very beautiful artwork it's almost as if you put calder mobiles into motion using machines once again free to travel molina also rekindled his interest in space exploration he joined theodore von carmen in creating the international academy of astronautics its purpose to help thaw the cold war by fostering space collaboration among nations for years to come melina would rub elbows and exchange ideas with cosmonauts astronauts and major space agency officials theodore von carmen who had been center stage for so long found himself less in demand in his later years in 1963 there was one last moment in the sun for the professor it is hard to visualize what the world would be like without aircraft and jet propulsion without the vision we have just entering the realm of reality of exploring space i'm especially glad to present this first national medal of science to one of the pioneers who has helped make all of this new and exciting age possible science is eternal its progress is continuous being a philosopher's son i have always felt it was necessary for me to believe in something i still believe that god will do right by us and that we will survive the spirit of destruction in short i am an optimist i believe in the goodness of the future and if i have done a small bit to help bring it about i am content [Music] shortly after his visit to the white house in frail health von carmen traveled to germany there he died five days short of his 82nd birthday in the presence of his old student frank molina [Music] in 1968 molina returned to jpl to take part in a celebration commemorating the first rocket experiment 30 years before it was a bittersweet moment for molina the laboratory that he had played such a large role in bringing into being had gone on to build the first u.s satellite and other spacecraft that had traveled to the moon to venus and to mars most of the solar system molina knew would soon be within reach how different his life and the history of american rocketry would have been had he stayed in the united states no one can say what can be said is that america's rocket program took a different route with different players and in doing so the pioneering contributions of molina and his fellow rocketeers today have been largely forgotten molina died in paris in 1981 he had never stopped working for peaceful and international efforts in the exploration of space and he continued with his own work as a kinetic artist creating more than 250 works nearly all of them speak of journeys to far distant places most people like to have you in a clear-cut cubbyhole sometimes i find that my former colleagues in scientific and technical research regard me no longer as such and that now i'm an artist among the artists they find it very difficult to accept me as an artist and they say i'm an engineer well it doesn't really much matter i'm a space man [Music] you