The Devil’s Rocketeer looks at the subject of a new book, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons:
John Whiteside Parsons, an early innovator of rocket technology, is not widely remembered today. Insofar as he is remembered, moreover, it is often not in connection with rocket science but rather with cultism, mysticism and black magic. Parsons was a figure of two worlds. He helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the aerospace company Aerojet, and also engaged in arcane rituals and mysterious practices. He died gruesomely in a perplexing explosion in his home laboratory in 1952 at age 37. [...] Parsons’ life makes for a colorful, if sometimes disturbing, story. Its diverse cast of characters includes rocket pioneer Theodore von K?rm?n, science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, mystic Aleister Crowley (reputed to be “the wickedest man in the world”), and L. Ron Hubbard, who subsequently founded Scientology.