Oscars. Kimmel - "Black people saved NASA and white people saved jazz"

[erpowers]

43. More Information

Did Katherine Johnson really compute John Glenn's trajectory?
Yes. "When John Glenn was to be the first astronaut to go up into the atmosphere and come back, and they wanted him to come back in a special place, and that was what I did, I computed his trajectory," says Katherine Johnson. "From then on, any time they were going to compute trajectories, they were given mostly, all of them to my branch, and I did most of the work on those by hand." -WHROTV Katherine Johnson Interview


Did John Glenn really ask that Katherine double-check the electronic computer's calculations for his first Earth orbit?
Yes. Fact-checking the Hidden Figures movie confirmed that John Glenn personally requested that Katherine recheck the electronic computer's calculations for his February 1962 flight aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6 capsule Friendship 7—the NASA mission that concluded with him becoming the first American to orbit the Earth. The scene in the movie unfolded in almost exactly the same way it does in real life, with Glenn's request for Katherine taken nearly verbatim from the transcripts. He even refers to her as "the girl." "Get the girl to check the numbers... If she says the numbers are good... I'm ready to go." -NASA

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/hidden-figures/