The Incredible Story of NASA’s Forgotten ‘Rocket Girls’

[Sancho]

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2016/05/19/3779620/the-forgotten-rocket-girls-of-nasa/

“I just remember just staring at this picture completely stunned. I have a PhD in Microbiology, and I consider myself very well-versed in the contributions of women scientists, but I had never heard of women working in NASA at this era, much less as scientists, and I really wanted to learn more,” Holt told ThinkProgress over the phone.

Holt’s research led her to an entire group of women who worked as human computers throughout the history of space exploration. Although her first inkling came through a fortuitous internet search, finding the whole story took painstaking digging. Even NASA’s archives had forgotten them. Using old photo captions that identified just one or two names in big groups of women, Holt cold called scores of women until she connected with the right ones.

The stories these women told her formed the basis of her new book, Rise of the Rocket Girls.
In it, Holt chronicles women’s central role in what we now think of as the key accomplishments in space exploration, and their lives as computers in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

[niyad]

1. k and r, with thanks. just like the WASP's and the women of bletchley circle--forgotten women.

[WhiteTara]

2. It's just sad that women are never given credit for

anything. That they were behind the most important work and acted as human computers is astounding. Thanks for posting this.

[PoliticAverse]

3. They were actually testing women to be astronauts back in the 1960s...

http://history.nasa.gov/flats.html

http://www.mercury13.com/

In the end, thirteen women passed the same physical examinations that the Lovelace Foundation had developed for NASA’s astronaut selection process.

[Triana]

4. Reminds me of the ENIAC women too. All mathematicians. First computer programmers were women.

All of them totally ignored or written out of the HIStory books.

[Gothmog]

5. There is a lady who is active in local Democratic politics who was a flight controller at NASA

Poppy Northcutt is a friend of my father in law and is an amazing person. http://www.businessinsider.com/poppy-northcutt-helped-apollo-astronauts-2014-12

[TexasProgresive]

6. My mother was one of those "rocket girls"

She went to work for NASA in Houston before there was a place to hang her coat at the Clear Lake site that would become the JSC. She had a life long love for mathematics and became a scientific programer on main frame computers. A great project that she and another women completed as GS-3s (clerks) was a trajectory program for the Apollo missions. The program could give any possible trajectory of the launch vehicle, main capsule and the LLM. It is possible that this program at least laid the groundwork for the Apollo 11 mission. Typically the ladies were not given credit for the work they did. That was given to an upper manager.

It always bothers me when girls turn their noses up at math since some of the best R&D team members I had the pleasure of working with were women mathematicians.

[Xipe Totec]

7. My boss when I worked at JSC was a real badass

Amazing woman at so many levels. Aerospace engineer, pilot, mathematician, and marathon runner.

She was also a niece of Red Adair.

This was in the late 70's working on Shuttle.

[TexasProgresive]

8. Was she as bad asses as some of the astronuts (sic)?

My mother told us stories about the risky driving at JSC by some of the astronauts. There was one in particular who drove a Vette. You just had to stay out of his way. Maybe Jack Nicholson's character, Garrett Breedlove of "Terms of Endearment/Evening Star" was based on that guy.

Regardless of any of that my Mom put her time at NASA in an exalted place in her heart. I worked as a contractor at Wallops Station, VA and my memories of that time are just the same. It was the atmosphere that we were doing something great. And I think we were. I am a firm believer in research. Even if it fails at it's intended goal our knowledge is increased.

[Xipe Totec]

9. Well, she was Red Adair's niece, so...

And she did compete in the Powder Puff Derby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_Puff_Derby_%281947%29