Rise of the Rocket Girls

by Nathalia Holt

  As the minutes passed, the quiet dissolved into rumbling and outbursts, the stress of the moment wearing on all of them. But finally the signal they had been waiting for came through. Barbara confirmed the position, repeating her calculations on paper several times before twisting around in her seat and saying, “She made it!” Behind her, the room erupted in cheers.

  An engineer relayed the happy news to Pickering by phone at 12:49 a.m. Relief washed over him—the eight minutes they had been waiting to detect the satellite’s signal had been the longest of his life. As he whooped with joy, von Braun remarked, “She is eight minutes late.” At the Pentagon they called Eisenhower, who, away on a golfing trip, had been asleep. He responded with “Let’s not make too much of a hullabaloo.” It was too late for that; the celebration was already under way.

  At 2 a.m. journalists were led into the great hall at the National Academy of Sciences, where von Braun, Pickering, and Van Allen awaited them. After making the startling announcement to the room that America had put its first satellite into space, the three of them held aloft a model of Explorer, wide smiles on their faces. At the same time, in Pasadena, Barbara leaned back in her chair. She was too exhausted to move. Her decade of work at JPL had culminated in a success so sweet she could do little but gleefully drink in the moment.

  Margie, on the other hand, while delighting in the accomplishment, was still too young and new at the job to appreciate the magnitude of their history-making night. Yet the launch of Explorer 1 would shape her life in profound ways she couldn’t yet imagine. Her life, both personally and professionally, was about to take off.

  On Monday, Barbara and Margie could hear the cheering and applause before they even walked into the cafeteria. Everyone at JPL was celebrating. Spaceman costumes had been pieced together from lab equipment and a sign read MADE AT JPL BY HARD-BOILED EGGHEADS AND COFFEE-BREAKERS. Barbara laughed. The computers ate cake and enjoyed the celebration. Sue felt slightly uncomfortable to be celebrating when she had just started at the lab. At the same time, she was proud of her new workplace. Explorer’s success belonged to America, and JPL, largely unknown to the public, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight.

  A few days later, on February 5, the Vanguard rocket made another attempt. The computers were eager to see whether the navy-sponsored project would succeed with its second satellite. With the success of Explorer 1 they no longer felt the sting of competition. Vanguard rose high in the air before streaking back down to Earth. It had failed again.

  Meanwhile, the engineers and computers at JPL were hoping to repeat their success as they readied themselves for the launch of Explorer 2. On March 5, they watched as the rocket blasted off. Each stage dropped off as expected until the fourth, a single Baby Sergeant, which didn’t fire. Instead of going into orbit, the satellite crashed. It was a reminder of how fragile this all was, that there was nothing routine about a launch.

  Twelve days later, on March 17, Vanguard finally succeeded at launching a satellite. But the computers didn’t have much time to ruminate on the navy’s success. Explorer 3 was due to lift off just nine days later. Their lives had become a whirlwind of calculations, trajectories, and late-night launches. In the midst of this craziness, Helen was trying to plan her wedding. Arthur had gotten a job at Bank of America in Pasadena and, with his new financial stability, wanted Helen to join her life with his. The girls were abuzz about the nuptials. In between calculating trajectories they chatted about lace trim, veil length, flowers, and receptions.

  The wedding was coming at a busy time but also on the heels of a celebratory year. JPL had made the jump from developing weapons to taking America’s first steps into space exploration. In fact, they were already starting to see scientific gains from Explorer. The cosmic ray counter designed by Van Allen’s group in Iowa had detected radiation belts surrounding Earth. While their existence had been postulated, Explorer gave proof that layers of charged particles wrapped around the planet like a blanket. With each additional Explorer satellite launched into space they would map out this radiation, seeing how far it stretched and with what intensity.

  But the computers weren’t content to work only on satellites. Already, at least on paper, the race to the moon had begun. The women dusted off the calculations they had made for the spurned Project Red Socks. Where once the U.S. government had been quick to reject any of JPL’s projects concerning outer space, now, after Explorer’s success, the lab had free rein. The confidence spilled into the computer room, where the women were enthusiastic about their new calculations. Helen laughed when she saw one of the girls using her manicured fingernails to draw the curve of a new spacecraft’s trajectory. “You’re plotting the path to the moon on your fingers,” she teased.

  Fingernails were a poor substitute for a set of French curves. These were wooden templates cut into elegant swirl shapes that almost resembled art nouveau. Instead of following a circular arc, the templates followed Euler’s spiral. This shape, explored by Leonhard Euler in 1744, curves more the farther the line moves away from its origin. It’s a perfect transitional curve for a moving object, because when the line is followed, the object’s acceleration doesn’t jump but increases steadily. For instance, the spiral is useful in calculating railroad curves that protect passengers from the lurching discomfort of an abrupt turn. Each swirl was a little different in length and slope and allowed the computers to connect any of their data points in a smooth curve that described a rocket’s trajectory.

  Helen owned a complete set of French curves that the women loved and would borrow whenever they could. She didn’t start calculating a trajectory with the French curves, though; she began by getting her special 4H mechanical pencils and graph paper. First she’d calculate two rows of numbers: how far the rocket would fly, and how high. This was the hard part, taking hours as she filled up pages in her notebook. Then she’d get out her log graph paper and plot the data. Occasionally, the yellow carbon paper would peek out from under the graph paper, and Helen had to straighten it. Before electronic copiers, carbon paper was the only way she could make duplicates of her work. Hunched over her notebook, she’d look at the first row of numbers. When the rocket reached 5,000 feet across the ground, it would be 7,600 feet high in the air. All that information became a single dot on her graph paper. She’d fill the paper, data points rising higher, just as the rocket might someday climb. The finishing touch was made by taking her set of French curves and connecting the dots.

  Helen was easily the fastest computer in the group. In the afternoons the women frequently held computing races. Two or more of them got ready at their desks while the rest of the room looked on. They started with the same equations and were equipped with identical Friden calculators. One of the women would shout, “Go!” and suddenly the room would fill with the clamor of the calculators, the din intensifying as fingers flew over the numbered keys. As the computers rushed to calculate square roots, the mechanical calculators started shaking. Soon the whole room was vibrating. The women yelled encouragement to their colleagues, spurring them to work even faster. Just when it seemed the room couldn’t possibly get any rowdier, Helen would raise her hand and yell, “Done!” She’d won again. The women clapped and laughed. They didn’t know why they even tried; Helen was unbeatable.

  One evening after work, Margie gave Sue a ride. Instead of driving down to their homes in Pasadena, they turned right off the main road and headed into the hills overlooking the lab. They wanted to see how far the road went. They drove up the length of the canyon road, Margie’s car barely making it up the steep incline in some places. There wasn’t much up there. The dry, brown hills were littered with scrubby bushes, not a flower to be seen. They got out of the car and rambled among the rocks in the fading afternoon light as the sun bounced off the windows of the lab beneath them. JPL looked tiny among the hills; it was hard to believe that so much excitement was contained within the small scattering of buildings. As they reached the crest of the canyon, Sue pointed out the m
oon, glowing an ethereal white against the darkening sky. It looked fragile, its brightness diluted by daylight. Still, its glow was like a beacon, challenging them to come closer, to uncover its mysteries. Sue and Margie were ready to accept the challenge.

  CHAPTER 7

  Moonglow

  Macie and Barbara stood together and threw rice as Helen walked out of the church with her brand-new husband. They swooned over the dress that perfectly hugged Helen’s figure, with sleeves to the elbows, the bodice tucking in at the waist, and a beautiful lace train flowing behind her. Helen smiled brightly. At the reception, held at the Los Angeles Hilton, Helen and Arthur gazed at each other as they slow-danced across the ballroom. When the band started playing “Moonglow,” from the popular movie Picnic, the dance floor filled with men in crisp suits and women swaying in full tulle skirts. Barbara rested her head on Harry’s shoulder as candles flickered at the tables and the singer crooned. Everyone was falling in love, not just with each other, but with the moon above.

  While Helen was getting married, America’s space program was also making it official. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law. Its goal was “to provide for research into problems of flight within and outside Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes” and gave Eisenhower four years in which to transfer existing agencies into the new administration. Pickering’s dreams for JPL, the hope of becoming a center for space exploration rather than weapons development, were inching closer. With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration established, JPL was aching to begin planetary missions. They were already anticipating how the new administration, by bringing together disparate research groups, would fundamentally change aeronautics research.

  Around the lunch table, the computers and engineers talked of little else. Now that they finally had the go-ahead to leave Earth, they weren’t content with plotting mere lunar missions. Before the ink establishing NASA was dry, JPL began proposing explorations into deep space. Mars and Venus fascinated in a way that the moon couldn’t. After all, telescopes had been trained on the lunar surface for more than three hundred years. The planets, on the other hand, seemed temptingly close, possibly within reach of JPL’s rockets. And who knew what might be on them? They might even discover alien life.

  It wasn’t just at JPL that dreamers were envisioning flights to nearby planets. Mars and Venus held a powerful sway over American imaginations in the 1950s. As our next-door neighbors in the solar system, the two planets had the best chance of supporting life. Scientists knew that the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) were too cold and their atmospheres likely too extreme to support life, while little Mercury, being closest to the sun, was far too hot. Astronomers were looking for a Goldilocks planet like our own, neither too hot nor too cold.

  A 1957 Disney movie titled “Mars and Beyond” described this idyllic temperate region: “In this golden zone are the orbits of Venus, Earth, and Mars. There may be life on Venus but we know very little about our sister planet, for her mysteries lie shrouded behind an impenetrable mantle of dense clouds. Beyond the earth, at the outer fringe of life’s temperature zone, is Mars, the third planet in our solar system where life could exist.” With only telescopes pointing to the planets, it was easy to imagine life lurking next door.

  But while some at JPL were ready to move away from rockets, the lab’s bread and butter for two decades, and begin designing spacecraft, others felt that the idea of sending probes to Mars and Venus before they had even made it to the moon was a little crazy.

  Harry thought Barbara was a little crazy too. It wasn’t just her unusual job. “There’s got to be something wrong with you,” he contended. “You’re young, charming, and still not married.” At his insistence Barbara started seeing a therapist. Harry would pick her up after each session and take her for coffee. Although she loved Harry dearly, she’d made it clear to him she wasn’t quite ready to get married yet.

  With the advent of NASA, the competition within America’s borders for its dollars was fierce: the military research labs were all jockeying for position and projects. When the air force failed to deliver on two lunar missions, NASA management handed the project over to JPL.

  America was desperate to beat the USSR in space exploration. To aid in that goal, JPL began work on the air force’s failure, a satellite named Pioneer that would scout the moon. This satellite had been named Pioneer by the air force, although the women referred to it simply as the moon probe. The design was very similar to the audacious Project Red Socks. The engineers and computers swapped out the Redstone rocket designed by von Braun’s group for a new Jupiter missile. The newly developed ballistic missile was capable of 150,000 pounds of thrust, about double that of the Redstone. They would need the extra push if they were going to travel 236,000 miles from Earth.

  Atop the Jupiter missile the design was essentially unchanged from Explorer. They would use the same spinning tubs of Baby Sergeants, with the spacecraft nestled on the fourth stage. The computers carefully plotted the course of the satellite, determining with precision the necessary timing and velocity to launch Pioneer into orbit. Their head start from Project Red Socks meant that they completed their calculations in record time. Now they could sit back and admire the design. The nose cone was painted in broad black and white stripes that prompted the women to gaily call it the merry-go-round. It perfectly matched the tubs of spinning rockets below it. They watched as crews of mechanics built the spacecraft. What started as shiny sheets of metal slowly grew into a full-fledged probe.

  The cone-shaped probe of Pioneer (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  By December they were ready to give the merry-go-round a go. Pioneer 3 (after 1 and 2 had been air force failures) was set to launch on December 6, 1958. That night Sue’s husband, Pete, worried about her. He couldn’t understand why she was always working such long hours, and now it looked like she would be there all night. Sue walked into the tiny control room with trepidation. The room was cluttered with tables and seemed oppressively small. She was already nervous—she hated waiting around and just wanted to get started—and then, as she readied herself for the imminent launch, Al Hibbs took a place standing over her shoulder. As the director of the Space Science division at JPL, he wanted to know as soon as possible whether the mission was a success or failure, and only Sue could tell him. Poor Bill Pickering was once again secluded at the Pentagon and counting on an open phone line for news.

  As soon as the numbers came racing in, all of Sue’s anxiety melted away. Once she was at a desk doing her work, a job she knew she was good at, she could feel the tension lift. The numbers were coming in fast, and Sue’s pencil was racing across her paper, barely able to keep up with the data. There was no time for her to break out the Friden; she had to do it all by hand. By calculating the rocket’s speed and direction, she was determining its escape velocity. She knew that, whether launching a missile or a marshmallow, you have to reach 11.3 kilometers per second (or about 25,000 miles per hour) to escape Earth’s gravitational pull. It was the middle of the night, and Sue was desperately trying to determine if Pioneer 3 would reach this magical number.

  In addition to computers made of skin and bones, a new processor had arrived at JPL. IBMs had, so far at least, not fared well in the lab. The engineers and computers preferred to do their calculations by hand, not relying on the massive machines, which had too many glitches to be trustworthy.

  The IBM 704, the latest of its kind, had arrived at JPL just in time for Pioneer 3. To differentiate it from its human counterparts they simply called it the IBM. It was huge, weighing over thirty thousand pounds and needing a specially constructed room of its own. At a cost of $2 million, it wasn’t cheap either.

  Sue found the behemoth the computers were in charge of very sophisticated. Using a keypuncher, they wrote simple programs on punch cards that they would feed into their digital counterpart. The new machine was more powerful than the IBM 701.
Instead of cathode ray tubes it used magnetic core memory, which was faster and more reliable. It employed floating-point hardware, allowing for more complex math than its predecessor. Not that they used it much. None of the engineers trusted the IBM, which was constantly in need of repair. Unfortunately it shared the same vacuum-logic circuitry as the 701. Because of this, the machine generated an enormous amount of heat, causing a tube to burn out every hour or so and shutting the whole system down. But even when it was working perfectly, the engineers and computers didn’t put much faith in the IBM. Their spacecraft was too precious to leave to the whims of new technology. The expensive, gigantic piece of equipment frequently sat unused.

  On the night of Pioneer 3’s launch, they tried to use the IBM only briefly before giving up on it. It was far too slow for this kind of work. Besides, the group in the room could feel confident in the calculations only when a real person was doing the math. Sue wasn’t worried when the IBM struggled; she knew it would come down to her hand-drawn computations to predict the mission’s success or failure.

  Things weren’t looking good. The Jupiter missile stopped firing prematurely. Calculating like mad, Sue shook her head. It wasn’t going to make it. With the first-stage malfunction, there was no way the other stages could give the spacecraft enough thrust. She was sad to see the Pioneer rise up 63,500 miles before falling back down to Earth.