Jerry Astl
Jaromír Astl, better known as Jerry Astl, was a Czech aeronautical engineer and explosive engineer who helped design the American Project Orion nuclear propulsion spacecraft in the 1950s and 1960s.
Career
Astl was born in Most, Czechoslovakia on 23 September 1922. After earning a degree in aeronautics in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, he worked as an engineer on the development of the Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe jet fighter during World War II. At the same, Astl was a member of the Czech resistance movement involved in sabotaging communication lines with high explosives. He eventually went underground and joined the resistance movement full-time until the end of war. Following the war, Astl came under suspicion of dissidence by the new communist government and he eventually escaped through Soviet-occupied Austria. Astl arrived in the United States in April 1949 and worked in Baltimore, Maryland at a series of odd jobs including in a shoe factory, a printing plant and as a movie theater projectionist. In 1955, he obtained American citizenship and moved to the San Diego, California where he was employed as an aeronautical engineer with Rohr, Inc. working on the Lockheed Electra. He then moved to Ryan Aeronautical and Douglas Aircraft Company to work on the DC-8.Asti was hired by General Atomic after it received funding to develop Project Orion.