ABSTRACT
Malina gave shape to the rocket as the primary vehicle for what we not call the space sciences. It is thus with Malina and his team, rather than Robert Goddard, that we can find the first successful liquid propellant spaceflight from the non-German branch of rocketry. The chapter examines his contributions to astronautics in order to address two themes: about the reciprocity between instrument and vehicle; and about the co-dependence of scientific and military rationales in the development of rocketry. The second section examines the culmination of Malina's earlier successes in the engineering of thrust to enlist military support to build a research vehicle, a sounding rocket, to study the upper atmosphere. The theoretical analysis was in time written up by Malina and Smith for the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences. Malina had already left JPL, rocketry and the United States for a job in Paris at the natural sciences section of the fledgling UNESCO.
