Jack Parsons is an interesting character in the history of American rocketry, but it's a major slight to the memory of Dr. Robert Goddard to call Parsons the father of it.

It is really only the title that uses that term, and oftentimes editors (who usually choose titles) know much less about a subject than the writers, and make dumb mistakes.

The book review itself, however, also goes a little overboard. I have not read the book, and I don't know much about Parsons, but the review implies that much of his work was with solid propellants, not liquids. Is this true?

Finally, we should remember that biographers tend to oversell their subjects. It is partly the nature of biography (after all, if you don't love your subject, then why are you writing about him?), and partly the requirements of selling a book. So hyping his importance to American rocketry is not that surprising.

He was unquestionably very important to the history of American rocketry (and yes, he was heavily involved with the development of useful solid propellants), but it's overstating it by quite a bit to call him its "father," when we have Robert Goddard.

Rand, the link for the Reason site doesn't work now. Perhaps the changed/removed it?

Sorry, should be fixed now.

Parsons' most important achievement, from what I read, was his invention of the first castable solid fuel, while involved in early JATO research. Not a small thing; before that, the science of preparing solid fuels was a very risky art, not really very far removed from what Roger Bacon as up to centuries ago.

I have some problems with calling Goddard a "father" either, though, in view of his secretiveness and profound disinclination to collaboration. People were forced to independently recreate a lot of Goddard's work because of it.

Parsons: American rocketry's crazy uncle. Goddard: American rocketry's negligent dad.

According to the book, Theodore Von Karman said Goddard was so secretive and solitary that he constituted a branch of American rocketry that died out.

nkrcx powhgxytl nrawldme wyfnxvec vbphjsfqg arsxpuw gwopatef