NASA's history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency - and in particular its Apollo lunar-landing program - wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. While working out how to get a nuclear warhead through the atmosphere, National Advisory Committee for...

A lonely misfit born into a wealthy Pasadena family, as a boy Parsons read science fiction and launched rockets in his backyard. By his early twenties, he was a leader of Caltech's "Suicide Squad," the motley band of young enthusiasts who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But his visionary imagination also led him into the occult community thriving in 1930s Los Angeles, and when fantasy's pull became stronger than reality, he lost both his work...