Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars

One stereotype of the early years of space exploration is that those years belonged to men. Nathalia Holt's book explores one sense in which that stereotype is false, as she traces the careers of a number of remarkable women who worked at NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) from its founding in the late 1930s.

Today, the word "computer" means a machine of some sort but, prior to the late 1940s, computers were humans, employed to carry out complex numerical computations for scientific and military purposes. For Holt's subjects, the computer job served as a rare opportunity to enter a technical field where they could not have been hired as engineers, because only men could get those jobs. This restriction applied even though these women show more often had science and engineering degees fully the equal of the men's - and always had mathematical skills that met or exceeded anything the men offered. The women supported engineering design, analyzed flight and experimental data, and navigated spacecraft through the solar system. Over the years, they took on increasing responsibilities. As machines that we would call "computers" made their appearance at JPL, the women became their first programmers. The women's work was integral to the great reconnaissance of the solar system carried out in large part by JPL spacecraft in the 1960s and after; for one example, the software that planned the Voyager probes' Grand Tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune was written by Sylvia Lundy (later Miller).

Ms. Lundy's name change reminds us that these women lived through, not just JPL's first years, but the changing American society of the era. Work/life issues arose repeatedly, with long work hours bringing more than one marriage to an end. The JPL history is guideposted by references to larger historical events, such as the Kennedy assassination.

Some of the expected problems faced by women in a male-dominated workplace are only obliquely touched on. In the late 1940s, Barbara Lewis Paulson was reluctant to travel to the launch range at White Sands, because there, the "men roamed unfettered." At the 1958 JPL Christmas party: "As the drinks flowed, Barbara reminded the single girls to be on the alert...JPL's parties could be loose and a little wild. Even in the midst of their revelry, the girls liked to look out for one another." The word "harassment" does not appear in the index, and the relevant law was far in the future. I think Holt says little more than her interviewees would, and they belong to a generation reticent about personal stories.

In describing these women's work, the book also provides a pocket history of early US rocketry and space exploration. Holt is much briefer than I would prefer about details. I would have liked at least one 10-20 page chapter going into technical detail on a particular project. If that's inappropriate for this sort of group profile, couldn't there have been a website? My complaint is partly answered by Holt's end notes, which provide plenty of references for further reading.

What technical details Holt does supply are written in figurative prose that often is misleading or even wrong. At one point, "...she needed to plot a path close enough to Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings to use their gravity while still staying in the proper alignment to fling the spacecraft out to Uranus and Neptune." The planets' gravity is what matters, not that of the moons and rings. Just a proofreading error? Elsewhere, a re-entering spacecraft is said to encounter the "flammable gases of the atmosphere." The heat of re-entry stems from the kinetic energy of the spacecraft; the air isn't flammable. Cape Kennedy's nearness to the equator is good because"...rockets got a boost from the rotational speed of Earth, which is more powerful at the equator than anywhere else." The right phrase would be "faster" not "more powerful." It seems that grace could have been combined with accuracy, while still keeping the book readable.

I like to read about the impact of science fiction on science and engineering, so I was pleased to find a shout-out to 1951's [Moon Ahead] by [[Leslie Greener]], which one of the women enjoyed.

This isn't a reader's best, first book to learn about JPL or the early days of rocketry and space exploration, but it's a valuable glimpse of the experiences of women in the field. show less

I have a saying I often include as a prelude to a forwarded social media posting boasting of the historical accomplishments of a woman: "Women never did anything but support their history-making husbands." The prelude is sarcastic and a biting response to a history professor (male) who replied to my question, 'Where were the women?' with the statement, 'They were busy taking care of their husbands and families and didn't have time to contribute to the advances chronicled in history.' Since that response by an obviously ignorant and uncreative individual who nevertheless held a PhD, I made it a point to discover women's contributions. Today, many wonderful authors share my fever for an answer to my question, 'Where were the women?', with show more a dogged determination that impresses me beyond words. I consider the mother of my women's history movement to be historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Ulrich gave us the immensely reproduced quote, "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Ulrich is also the author of A Midwife's Tale taking diaries of a c1800 New England midwife...diaries no historian before Ulrich had thought of as important...to piece together an intricately detailed and much celebrated history of a small New England town. Now we know the answer to my question. Women were making history. Their accomplishments simply were not chronicled beyond their own hands. Add Rise of the Rocket Girls as a tribute to the history-making women whose contributions to our space exploration history are only recorded among the stars and not the history books. Literally, among the stars, as their lines of intricate mathematical programming continue to work within the technology of such advances as the Hubble Telescope and Voyager craft of the Juno mission that orbited Jupiter in June 2016.

Why have we never heard of these women? Because they were hired to serve as mathematical work horses. These women were hired to do the difficult, intricate, painstakingly precise equations, by hand, of rocket designs, rocket thrust, module trajectories, control systems, landing systems, and numerous other details that allowed men to walk on the moon and a rover to explore Mars. Eventually, these women became the engineers who wrote the copious amounts of computer code that were used to engineer the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle. These women worked alongside the men who were recognized for their efforts, though the women rarely received any public acclaim. So much were these tremendous women obscured from history, JPL, the company they helped start, demoted one of its long-time, long-admired, brilliant women engineers to an hourly wage (because she didn't hold an advanced degree) and none of the women were even invited to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Explorer I honoring esteemed male guests. These women...these fantastic, phenomenal, genius women...were simply left off the invitation list to celebrate the satellite they helped successfully create. When will we learn? Women are not part of history because they are deliberately written out of it.

I am grateful Holt brought these women out of obscurity. This is a book that MUST be read. The stories of these women must be recognized and remembered. It is proof that women made history, though to find their contributions one may have to let go of biases in order to look in different and unique spaces. show less

This book should be required reading in junior high and middle school classes and for anyone who feels that women aren't suited for STEM classes or careers. Not only is it packed with history on the American Space program, it also shows the integral parts played in said history by women.

Adult women should to read this book, to see all the amazing first steps taken by the Rocket Girls--working moms, pioneering computer science majors, first users of electronic calculating machines and computers, the first women to wear pantsuits to work.

Boychild geeks who want women out of science fiction need to read this book and learn that there wouldn't be jet engines or spaceflight without women.

And frankly, anyone who loves a good story should show more read this, because it's not at all dry. The book is factual and supported with all kinds of documentation, but it's also a thrilling adventure tale that sweeps you right along.

I also learned that the first flyby of Mars happened on the evening of the day I was born. show less

I've worked at a flight school, grabbed one of the first copies of Astronaut's Wives and watched the series, and even married a corporate pilot....to there IS something about flight and the heavens that i find intriguing. That's why when i saw THIS book and knew i had to have it....so i thank the author for the chance to read it!

Simply put, it's amazing.
Extremely well -researched, Holt takes the topic of rocket science and breaks it down while involving the lives of the initial 'computers'. The who's who of the real brains behind the whole JPL. ( jet propulsion lab ) She takes a piece of history involving the female scientists at NASA and makes them 3-D. Such intricate miles of multiple calculations and equations solved using only show more slide rules and their own brains.
Human 'calculators 'that worked with male engineers to create what we all now take for granted. Thing i appreciated most was that the reader doesn't need to have a scientifically geared mind to thoroughly enjoy this book. show less

This book tells the story of several women who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasedena, California in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Their work was instrumental in creating missiles for military use and rockets that lifted their payloads into space. They were particularly key in working on Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon that prepared the way for Apollo, the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Mercury, and the Voyager program missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Holt interviewed several women who worked at the JPL to get their perspectives on this age of discovery.

Many of the women got their start as "computers," who were JPL employees who performed mathematical computations (a usage of the term that's show more been made familiar by the book and movie Hidden Figures). Working as a computer provided an opportunity for women who studied mathematics to use their skills. While it was a support position to the (predominantly male) engineers, the position was highly-regarded within JPL and well paid. The group of women working together, with women supervisors, also felt that they had a close-knit family at JPL. Not everything was positive as the group of women felt that they had to look out for one another at office parties when men were on the prowl. Woman employees were also fired when they got pregnant.

Holt does a great job of telling these women's stories from their roles in furthering interplanetary exploration to their everyday lives of marriages, raising children, and even oddities like a JPL beauty contest. As Holt notes, it was the progressive hiring practices at JPL that made it possible to have enough women to even to something as seemingly outdated as a beauty contest. show less

For the younger generations who have grown up with personal computers and tiny calculators that perform complex mathematical calculations this book will come as an eye-opener. Even for myself (I can remember programming a main frame computer by punch card), it was inspiring to think that before electronic calculators there was only paper and pencil and slide rules to do the math that calculated trajectories for rockets. This year's movie "Hidden Figures" told the story of one group of females involved in the space race but on the other side of the US there were more women "computers" doing their bit. This is their story.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was a small and crazy workshop in the 1940s that wanted to develop rockets to show more propel airplanes and they needed someone good with numbers to do all the calculations. They hired one woman and then another and then more. These women had to work in an unheated building in the hills above Pasadena right beside the testing grounds. They became a tight-knit group who could be relied upon to take the raw data and produce the calculations for thrust and velocity for all manner of rockets. Unlike the women in Hidden Figures they didn't work on the manned missions but their work led the way for the Apollo missions. They also worked on the missions that sent spacecraft to the other planets of the solar system and further. They put in long hours when required and also had homes and children and churches and husbands that required their attention. They were eventually given the job title of engineer but male engineers made more intially. Just a few years ago NASA decided that engineers had to have an advanced degree and they demoted a woman who had been an employee for 50 years to an hourly wage because she didn't have a degree. They had to reverse the decision when they learned that because of the hours she worked she was making even more money than before.

The writing of this book was not at all dry because the human stories were mixed in with the technological explanations. There are also lots of great pictures that show the women and the equipment. I would recommend this to anyone interested in women's history or the space race or changing technology or fans of Hidden Figures. show less

A history of women at JPL (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), from its origins in the 1940s, through many decades of exploring the solar system, up to the present day (or very nearly: the book was published in 2016). For much of this time, most of the women there were employed as computers, calculating complex engineering equations and rocket trajectories by hand with pencil and paper. If you've seen the movie Hidden Figures, or read the book it's based on, this is the same type of job the women featured there were doing elsewhere at NASA. (And, yes, not all of the women at JPL where white, either.) Later on, as electronic computers began to replace human ones, they became computer programmers, as well. And by now, of course, there are show more many female engineers working there, although still not in the same numbers as the men.

I wasn't always exactly engaged by the writing in this particular volume. It wanders back and forth between being a straightforward history and trying to go for a "narrative nonfiction" approach of dramatizing things from various women's POV, and the two things are grafted rather awkwardly together. (This seems to be a common structure in non-fiction these days, and too few writers, in my opinion, pull it off especially gracefully.) The subject matter is certainly interesting, though. Holt covers a lot of the space missions fairly quickly and not in immense depth, but as a general overview of what JPL has done in its history, it works well enough. And the lives and careers of these women provide a really vivid illustration of what life was like for working women in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, when equally qualified men and women were seldom hired for the same positions and a woman could be summarily fired for getting pregnant. These are worthwhile stories to hear and remember, and even if I have slightly mixed feelings about the writing here, I am unambiguously glad to see these intelligent, dedicated women getting the recognition they deserve. show less