In this episode of our podcast LA Made: Blood, Sweat & Rockets, we round out a three-part series on the Red Scare and examine how McCarthyist fallout at JPL played a role in the weaponization of space.
Brilliant aeronautical engineer Tsien Hsue-Shen is a rising star in the aerospace industry. Courted by Caltech to lead its aeronautics department, Tsien files to become a full-fledged U.S. citizen. Unfortunately, Tsien’s connections to the Suicide Squad, the name given to the early rocket pioneers at JPL, send up a red flag to the FBI.
As we’ll hear, Frank Malina — another of the influential early rocket engineers — isn’t the only scientist whose citizenship blows up in his face as a result of his alleged communist affiliations. Tsien soon discovers that working in the aerospace industry while being Chinese-American has a pretty short half-life of its own.
Tune in as our host M.G. Lord unravels the convoluted irony of how the United States government — in an effort to prevent classified missile research from getting into the hands of the Chinese military —ends up delivering one of its most valuable resources directly to their doorstep.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the costly effects of McCarthyism, but unfortunately it was often rocket scientists who paid the highest price.
Internal prejudice, global tension, and unwieldy international efforts to gain dominance over the final frontier of space.
Geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China is still very present to this day. That historic and present-day tension, made the news over the weekend when U.S. fighter jets shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
The US Air Force has shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) February 4, 2023
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