Frank J. Malina

…1940 von Kármán, together with Frank J. Malina, showed for the first time since the invention of the black-powder rocket in China in about the 10th century that it was possible to design a stable, long-duration, solid-propellant rocket engine. Shortly thereafter, the prototype of the famed jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) rocket…

…engineers led by graduate student Frank Malina began working on rocketry at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT). Malina’s group was supported by the eminent aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, GALCIT’s director, and it included Chinese engineer Qian Xuesen (Ch’ien Hsüeh-sen), who in the 1950s returned…