From marginal to founding father: how an occultist and rocket fuel inventor changed the world, and then was forgotten
History knows many examples where world-changing ideas were born on the fringes of the mainstream, in the minds of people whom contemporaries considered eccentrics or even heretics. One of the most striking examples is Jack Parsons, a self-taught chemist, occultist, and, according to many experts, the true father of American rocketry. His journey from launching homemade rockets in California canyons to creating the fuel that took humanity into space is not just a biography, but a universal script of how a peripheral idea becomes an industrial norm.
The "Suicide Squad" and the Birth of the Rocket Era
In the 1930s, when official science considered space flight a fantasy, Parsons, along with a group of enthusiasts from Caltech — the so-called "Suicide Squad" — conducted dangerous experiments. Their main achievement was composite solid fuel that could be cast into molds and mass-produced. This invention became the foundation for the solid rocket boosters of the Space Shuttle and Minuteman missiles. In 1943, this group evolved into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Parsons himself became a co-founder of Aerojet. Wernher von Braun, a key figure in the German and American space programs, once remarked that it was Parsons, not him, who should be called the "father of rocketry."
Two Sides of Freedom
By day, Parsons was an engineer; by night, he was the leader of the California branch of the occult order Ordo Templi Orientis. In 1946, he wrote the essay "Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword," which became a prophetic manifesto. In it, he warned about the erosion of privacy, criticized loyalty tests and state surveillance, placing his hopes on the "creative minority" — those few capable of independent thought. Half a century later, these ideas became the ideological foundation for the movement that gave the world Bitcoin.
From Cypherpunks to Bitcoin ETFs
The cypherpunks of the 1990s became a literal embodiment of Parsons' "creative minority." They believed that code and cryptography were the new sword of freedom. From this environment emerged Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 with his white paper. In its early years, Bitcoin was a toy for geeks, but by January 2024, the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs, integrating "stateless money" into the Wall Street system. The revolution was complete once its ideas became part of the new order.
The Tragedy of the Pioneer
Parsons did not live to see the triumph of his ideas. At the height of the Cold War, he was removed from classified work due to his connections with Marxists, and his occultism became a convenient pretext. He died at age 37 in an explosion in his home laboratory. The press quickly transformed him from a rocketry genius into a "priest of a black magic cult." The industry preferred to forget its inconvenient founder. His name survived only in the name of a crater on the far side of the Moon, and JPL engineers jokingly deciphered the laboratory's acronym as "Jack Parsons Lives."
Survivorship Bias and Lessons for the Crypto World
Parsons' story is not a guarantee of success for any marginal idea. For every revolution, there are hundreds of failures. In the crypto industry, dozens of projects that raised billions have vanished without a trace. EOS, which raised $4 billion, never became the "Ethereum killer." Success is determined not by the status of an "outsider," but by whether the technology solves a real problem and whether the market is willing to pay for it.
My expert commentary: Currently, neurointerfaces, DeSci, and the open AI movement are vying for the role of such a "peripheral idea." In terms of social mechanics, they are repeating the path of the crypto community a decade ago. History does not provide forecasts, but it teaches us to recognize recurring patterns. What today seems like a sect of geeks could tomorrow become an industry with trillion-dollar budgets.