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since explorer won the first u.s.

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satellite the Jet Propulsion lab has

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been a pioneer in America's space age

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its robotic spacecraft and Rovers have

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explored the solar system from Mercury

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to Neptune and looked out into the

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universe beyond anything seen before the

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beginnings of JPL can be found right on

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its doorstep just north of the Pasadena

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Rose Bowl and this dry riverbed called

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the Arroyo Seco turn back time seventy

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years to Halloween 1936 that's when a

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group from Caltech and their friends

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came out here to test an idea a tiny

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rocket motor that would eventually

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they were an odd mix Cal Tech student

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Frank Molina who later became the first

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director of JPL was interested in

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aerodynamics Jack Parsons was a chemist

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his buddy ed Foreman was a talented

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machinist Rudolph shod and caltex Apollo

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Smith also helped as Molina described in

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his 1968 interview the first test was

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made on the thirty-first of October 1936

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we had no money except on [\h__\h] money

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so we went around looking for secondhand

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stuff all over the area the group had

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the backing of Fame professor theodore

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von karman enough shall text Guggenheim

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aeronautical laboratory but most

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everyone else scoffed at rocketeers

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people associated rockets in these days

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with what we would consider bad science

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fiction films now they tried three times

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to fire the thing and the fuse they were

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using to split powder fuse just kept

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blowing out so nothing happens on the

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fourth try they ignited the motor and

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the oxygen line came off with around

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started shooting fire and they all ran

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away first day was a bust but in this

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letter to his parents in Texas Molina

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called it a success he considered it to

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success anyways to be because they

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learned a number of things not to do

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tests in November 1936 proved to be

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little better except for half

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produce this now classic photo Molina

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believe rockets could be the ticket to

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the high altitudes he needed for science

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research no one knew how to build a

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rocket more either liquid or solid

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really that was very effective very

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satisfactory so it meant that actually

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the people that the other was here but

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really thrown upon our own resources

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finally on January sixteenth 1937 6x the

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white smoke you're seeing coming up is

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the motor running the work of the group

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over these years put rocket propulsion

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raucous blight on our real sound

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scientific or technical basis from those

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early days in the Arroyo to the military

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work to space exploration the wild

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experiments 70 years ago set the tone

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for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a