During his study for the doctorate degree at the California Institute of Technology, Qian Xuesen made friends with many like-minded fellows, and Frank Malina was one of his friends. That fellow had wide-ranging hobbies, and showed great enthusiasm over scientific experiments. In 1936, Malina organized a rocket research group and invited Qian Xuesen to join in, for his solid theoretical knowledge about aerodynamics was extremely important for the rocket research. 

Qian Xuesen was serious, responsible, and had been deeply dedicated to the rocket science since his involvement. He carefully sorted research materials and calculation data, provided more than one hundred manuscripts, gave detailed analysis over combustor temperatures, nozzle designs and thrust calculations.

In the beginning, the rocket research group was just an interest group voluntarily organized by students. As many accidents and even accidental explosions occurred in the development experiments, leaders of the University thought it troublesome and banned their experiments within campus. The group members, nicknamed the “Suicide Squad”, had no choice but to transfer their experiment site to a valley at the outskirts of the city. 

However, the arrival of the Second World War changed everything, causing the US military to show great interest in the rockets. They assigned research subjects to Von Kármán, expected him to apply the aerodynamics theory to the military, and allocated a big sum of funding for the rocket research group, turning the group into an aviation jet company to sell rockets to the military.

In December, 1942, under the active recommendation of Von Kármán, Qian Xuesen received a special safety certificate approved by the US Military Police, and was allowed to participate in all the military science tasks of high confidentiality assigned by the US military and the Ministry of Defense. He was employed to work as a teacher of the jet propulsion training class, and gave lessons for two courses: “Applied Mathematics” and “An Introduction to Missiles”.

In addition, the valley where the “Suicide Squad” was located became the jet propulsion laboratory (“JPL” in short) under the management of the US military. Qian Xuesen was the leader of the JPL research group. In the late 1950s, JPL was incorporated into the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), took charge of development and operation of deep space probes, and became an international leading institute. 

In 1944, the US Ministry of Defense set up a scientific consultative team and invited Qian Xuesen to join in. Soon after, as a colonel of the US military, he followed Von Kármán to fly to Europe and investigate the research status of Germany, Britain and France in the aerospace and rocket fields. Of course, the first priority of their European investigation was to interrogate the rocket experts who provided services for Nazi Germany, and assist the US in obtaining all the relevant materials, instruments and advanced technology.

 During their investigation tour, Qian Xuesen was lucky to meet Ludwig Prandtl, teacher of Von Kármán and one of the founders of modern mechanics, Von Braun, “King of Rockets” of Germany, and the famous German aerodynamics expert Herman, who showed a comprehensive and deep understanding of German rocket technology. 

After the investigation tour, the Scientific Consultative Team compiled a report titled “Towards New Horizons”, which worked out the long-term roadmap for the development of the US aerospace technology in the post-war period. There were 13 volumes of the report decrypted, and Qian Xuesen participated in compiling five of them. 

In February of 1946, General Arnold, Commander of the US Army Aviation Branch, issued a letter to highly praise Qian Xuesen for his great contributions to the rockets and jet propulsion field. Qian Xuesen received affirmation from US academic circles and the military by virtue of his irreplaceable knowledge.