Frank Malina

Frank Joseph Malina (October 2, 1912 – November 9, 1981) was an American aeronautical engineer and painter, especially known for becoming both a pioneer in the art world and the realm of scientific engineering.

Malina was born in Brenham, Texas. His father came from Bohemia. Frank's formal education began with a degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1934.

In 1935, while a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Malina persuaded Professor of Aeronautics Theodore von Kármán to allow him to pursue studies into rocketry and rocket propulsion. The formal goal was development of a sounding rocket.

Malina and five associates (including Jack Parsons) became known at Caltech as the "Suicide Squad" because of their dangerous experiments (and failures) when testing rocket motor designs.

Malina's group was forced to move their operations away from the main Caltech campus into the more remote Arroyo Seco. This site and the research Malina was conducting would later become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Malina served as the second Director of JPL.

In 1939, the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society) awarded Malina the Prix d'Astronautique for his contribution to the study of interplanetary travel and astronautics.

In 1942, von Kármán, Malina and three other students started the Aerojet Corporation.

By late 1945, Malina's rockets had outgrown the facility at Arroyo Seco, and his tests were moved to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Here, the project's Wac Corporal sounding rocket was the first U. S. rocket to break the 50-mile altitude mark, becoming the first sounding rocket to reach space.

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