Missile Program Quotes



H. S. Tsien was one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the major technical leaders of the American Space and Missile Programs. In the Red Scare of the 1950s some nativist conservative members of Congress and others managed to get his security clearance removed on the grounds that he had Communist Sympathies. Like many other American Citizens, he disapproved of the Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-shek even though Chiang was the anti-Communist bulwark in China. Since his work was space and missiles, he had little professional to do and when Chiang Kai-shek was defeated in China and pushed to Taiwan, H. S. Tsien ended up going to China and starting their rocketry program. (He is known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry”). He is the only scientist who was an early leader in the space programs of two different nations. Kimball, whose naval missiles were all in part developed by H. S. Tsien’s work, was furious, but at the time with McCarthyism riding high, his criticism was met by accusations that he was a Communist sympathizer.