Rockets and Rituals: Qian Xuesen’s Path to Mysticism

Qian Xuesen, a founding father of China's space program, led government-backed research into human extrasensory perception and "somatic science" during the 1980s. This interest was deeply influenced by his early career at Caltech, where he collaborated with Jack Parsons, a brilliant rocket scientist who utilized occult rituals and ancient texts to develop breakthrough chemical propellants. Ultimately, Qian viewed these mystical practices not as irrational superstitions but as experimental frontiers that, like traditional physics, could be analyzed through rigorous quantitative methods and scientific observation.