The JPL Library and Archives is planning a series of video-showings at the Hub during lunch times this Summer.  We will begin with the JPL 75th Anniversary “Beginnings of the Space Age” series, produced by Blaine Baggett and his team at JPL.  Bring your lunch, come to the Hub, enjoy!

The American Rocketeer

This video tells the little-known and controversial story of Frank Malina, how one man’s dreams and idealism changed his life, Caltech and the nation.

Today, space probes designed, built and managed within earshot of the first rocket firing on a desolate Southern California canyon wash have reached every planet in our solar system and peered well beyond its boundaries. Each probe carries on it the logo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But more importantly, each probe carries with it the legacy of scientific and engineering excellence that began some three-quarters of a century ago in an isolated, scrub-strewn gulch northeast of Los Angeles.

On Hallowe’en day in 1936, Malina led a ragtag group of Amateur rocket enthusiasts to the Arroyo Seco, where they conducted their first stand-up rocket engine test that would lay the groundwork for the Lab’s founding. Malina’s personal letters, drawings and paintings reveal an extraordinary story of how JPL came to be. Though many other fascinating characters populate “The American Rocketeer,” at its core the film is a personal story of one man’s dream – and how his ideas and idealism put him on a collision course with the world.