by Social Media posts claim that Walt Disney and four others, including practitioners of the occult and a former member of the Nazi party, are the “founders” of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This is misleading; Although two of the people on the list were scientists involved in rocket development — one of whom played a significant role in the early space program — the agency was created by an act of Congress and founded by former president Dwight Eisenhower.
A post shared May 10, 2024 on Facebook includes five photos that show, it says, “Founders of NASA.” Among with them: Disney, “Ronald Hubbard, Founder of Scientology,” “Wernher Von Braun, Ex Nazi,” “Jack Parsons, Themelite occultist,” and “Aleister Crowley, Wickedest man on earth.”
Similar posts spread across Instagram, X, Reddit and TikTok, some dating back several years.
Although some of the men on the list were involved in the early American space program, claims that they founded NASA are inaccurate.
The agency was created in 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act (archived here). Eisenhower appointed T. Keith Glennan as his first administrator (archived here) as the United States moved to respond to the Soviet Sputnik program.
“At the most basic level, NASA was founded by the US government, not a group of people,” Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the Project Apollo collection at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (archived here), told AFP on 20 May, 2024.
The science and technology historian also said that NASA has recognized former president Lyndon Johnson, congressional researcher Eileen Galloway and many others for their contributions to program (archived here and here).
The AFP examined the role of each person named in the posts.
Von Braun
At the end of World War II, the United States recruited more than 100 German scientists, including von Braun, to work on ballistic missiles and related research in a program called Project Paperclip (archived here). Some ended up in the space program.
Von Braun was a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) on Space Technology (archived here), which laid the groundwork for NASA.
NASA
Before being recruited by the United States, von Braun joined the Nazi party in 1937, becoming an officer in the paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS). Chief architect of Germany’s V-2 rocket under Adolf Hitler, von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle that would take Americans to the Moon.
The German scientist “was a very important figure in the history of space exploration in the United States,” Muir-Harmony said.
“He influenced and contributed to conversations about what NASA should look like. He also influenced the decision to send people to the Moon.”
Disney
Disney, the animator who created Mickey Mouse and a company that became an entertainment empire, had no direct involvement in the US space program. However, his TV show “Tomorrowland” helped popularize the idea of space travel at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a race for space supremacy.
Disney produced three “science factual” shows in the mid-1950s that featured von Braun as narrator and depicted future space travel (archived here). According to the Disney Family Museum, Eisenhower asked for the first episode, “Man in Space,” to be screened at the Pentagon as an “educational space primer.”
Muir-Harmoney said Disney played a role in building public support, “but it had nothing to do with the early space program” other than giving von Braun “a platform”.
Parsons, Hubbard and Crowley
Parsons was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology and helped develop solid fuel rocket technology that was later used in the US space program. After the first experiment in 1936, Parsons co-founded the school’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, now funded by NASA (archived here).
Although Parsons was involved in early rocketry experiments, “he certainly could not be considered the founder of NASA,” Muir-Harmony said.
Parsons died in an explosion in 1952 — years before the creation of the agency. He was also not involved with the Jet Driving Laboratoryaccording to sn account by a historian of science William Ashworth at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Ashworth wrote that Parsons’ legacy was marred by his followers Crowley, the leader of Thelemite occultism, and a subsequent relationship with L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer who later founded the Church of Scientology.
Muir-Harmony said she is not aware of any role Crowley and Hubbard played in the US space program, other than their relationship with Parsons. AFP found no evidence linking the men to NASA.
AFP contacted the agency for further comment, but no response was forthcoming.
AFP checked other claims about NASA here and here.
