No man may have done more to launch modern jet and rocket propulsion research than John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons. Born in 1914 to a wealthy, but dysfunctional family, Parsons began working with explosives at the Hercules Powder Company during his senior year of high school. He later suffered through only two years of college at the University of Southern California before dropping out, but his minimal education didn't stop him and a small band of reckless compatriots from engineering and testing rocket fuels at Caltech.
When World War II rolled around, the U.S. military discovered Parsons and his rebels of rocketry and generously funded their experiments. With such a monetary fertilizer, the group soon grew into Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the entity that is today responsible for an impressive host of successful treks into space, including the recent Curiosity Mars Rover.
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