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

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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.