"The American Rocketeer"

Presented By: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"The American Rocketeer" is the first episode of a three-part documentary miniseries titled, Beginnings of the Space Age.

The 90-minute "American Rocketeer" tells the little-known and controversial story of Frank Malina, who was a Caltech graduate student studying aviation engineering in the 1930s when two young men wanting to build rockets approached him. He agreed to team up, having no idea of what that decision would mean to his life, to Caltech and to the nation.

On Halloween day in 1936, Malina led a ragtag group of amateur rocket enthusiasts to the Arroyo Seco, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's current eastern end, where they conducted their first stand-up rocket engine test that set in motion the Lab's founding.

Malina's personal letters, drawings and paintings reveal an extraordinary story of how JPL came to be. "Though there are many fascinating characters in "The American Rocketeer," at its core it is a personal story of one man's dreams, and how his ideas and idealism put him on a collision course with the world," said Blaine Baggett, JPL's director of communications and education.