Rise of the Rocket Girls

by Nathalia Holt

  Barbara was too big for swooning. She was seven months pregnant and, despite her fatigue, was still happily making it to work every day. However, she hated the long walk from the parking lot up the hill to the lab, which left her huffing and puffing. Parking had become a problem at JPL. Unlike in the old days, when employees took the streetcar up to the gate and parking was plentiful, now everyone drove. The lot was bursting at the seams not only with employees but also with visitors, contractors, and politicians. Most days, Barbara found herself having to park at the far end of the lot. With her poufy maternity wear, she felt like a giant circus tent hiking to work in the mornings. Citing her pregnancy, she applied for a better parking spot. She was feeling clever about her maneuver to get one of the coveted spots when the administration replied to her request. “You have to stop working immediately, today,” they told her on the phone. “We can’t have a pregnant employee.” Saying it was for “insurance purposes,” they fired Barbara.

  It was a blow. In a daze, she looked around the room at the women who were both her subordinates and her friends. There was no time to even say good-bye. She wondered what would become of the missions she had worked so hard on, deprived of her passion and expertise. A decade of her life was vanishing before her eyes. At home she cried as Harry held her. “I thought I was worth more than that,” she said between sobs. In the space of a phone call, Barbara had gone from invaluable supervisor with a long career to unemployed pregnant wife.

  JPL was reorganizing since becoming part of NASA. The computers were still human and still literally had a hand in every project. In recognition of Helen Ling’s importance, management made her head of the newly organized computer department, now called Mission Design. She had won the respect of both the engineers and the other women. Comprising the women that Macie and Barbara had hired and trained, the computer department soon became known as Helen’s girls. Frequently the engineers referred to them as “computresses,” but the women bristled at the term. They called themselves the sisterhood.

  Within the computer group, interlopers began to appear. These stealthy intruders were new IBMs, far more advanced than their massive predecessors. The women couldn’t believe how quickly the technology was advancing. Instead of vacuum tubes, the new computers used transistors, small, three-pronged gadgets, first made out of germanium but soon afterward silicon. In addition to amplifying electrical inputs just as vacuum tubes did, they acted like switches, turning on and off, and thus vacillating between two binary states, zero and one. The transistors were much more efficient than the tubes, able to work faster with less energy and taking up far less space. They could also be integrated onto a circuit, forming a chip. That chip was then connected with fine gold wires to a resistor and a capacitor. The women would take the backs off the new IBMs to admire the neat rings of gold inside. They called them the small computers, since they could fit on a desk rather than requiring their own room. The large, vacuum-tube IBM held its place of honor in its own room next door, still in daily use, but the Burroughs E101 was already starting to collect dust.

  The new digital computers still couldn’t do much. Even basic arithmetic was sluggish. Compounding this problem was the fact that the engineers were suspicious of the technology. Having a human being perform the calculations was the only way they could feel confident in the math.

  While Helen was taking charge of both the women and the machines, men were leaving Earth. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. He orbited the planet aboard the Soviet Vostok 1. Helen was shocked to see the headline MAN IN SPACE. She couldn’t believe they had lost yet again. Less than a month later, on May 5, Alan Shepard sat perched atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket in a capsule he named Freedom 7. He blasted off from Cape Canaveral, rising 116 miles above Earth on his fifteen-minute, twenty-eight-second trip. However, unlike Gagarin, he didn’t go into orbit.

  Although the Redstone rocket powering the spacecraft was simply a stretched-out version of Juno, the launch vehicle that propelled Explorer into space, the women felt little personal connection to the mission. While JPL was focused on unmanned missions, the new Space Task Group based in Houston was tackling crewed ones. Dr. Max Faget, an engineer in the newly formed group, designed the spacecraft that would carry humans into space. He would eventually work on all the crewed ships, from Mercury to Apollo to the space shuttle. The task group’s designs were sent from Houston to a private contractor. McDonnell Aircraft constructed the cone-shaped Mercury capsule, barely big enough for Shepard’s five-foot-eleven frame. The capsule weighed only a third as much as its Russian counterpart but was also less durable. While the Vostok could survive in space for a week, the Mercury spacecraft could barely last twenty-four hours.

  So while launching a man into space and bringing him back safely was a big accomplishment for the Americans, in many ways it was a hollow victory. Whether in manned or unmanned missions, the USSR was far ahead. There was hardly a staff member at JPL who didn’t feel the burning desire to beat the Soviets.

  Helen was doing a little burning of her own. She had prepared data analysis for one of the engineers, Charles “Chuck” Vegos. As a joke she burned the edges of the pages that were printed with the data before handing them over to Chuck. He looked at the pages, rimmed in orange and black, in shock. He was speechless until Helen started laughing. “Well, we’re in the data reduction business,” she said, a wide smile on her face. The room filled with laughter, and Chuck recovered when Helen handed him the real data, intact.

  Data reduction started with the women wading through exceptionally large sets of raw data from the performance of the rockets being fired in Florida and California. The rows of numbers were a nonsensical mess until the computers transformed them into simplified, meaningful information. Helen summed up the relationship between engineers and computers with the phrase “Engineers make up the problems and we solve them.” Solving the problem meant finding trends in the data sets and reporting on their findings. The computers’ calculations would help determine the maximum possible weight of a spacecraft and its various possible trajectories.

  The computers’ deft abilities also greatly influenced spacecraft design. However, the new ship the engineers were designing for, Ranger, apparently weighed too much. New test data were underwhelming, showing the rocket’s ascent to be less powerful than the computers had originally calculated. The group now needed to trim off a whopping seventy-five pounds. Worse still, time was running out. A firm launch schedule, starting in July 1961, had already been set by NASA. The pressure to get to the moon was intense.

  While the Soviet Union had already landed on the moon, America’s lunar program was lagging behind. JPL had designed the sophisticated new Ranger spacecraft with a tall antenna, solar power, and a camera to capture images of the surface of the moon. An Atlas-Agena rocket would launch it. The Atlas missile had first been designed by the U.S. Air Force to launch an eight-thousand-pound thermonuclear warhead, and it was gigantic, standing seventy-five feet tall. Despite its size, the rocket was sprightly, featuring a “balloon structure” that kept it lightweight. It contained three engines, two of which dropped off soon after flight, making the load that much lighter. The upper stage of the launch vehicle was an Agena rocket, designed secretly by the air force. The combination had the potential to be powerful, although it was still untested. Because of this, the first two Ranger missions wouldn’t even try to get to the moon; these two launches were solely for testing.

  For the Ranger missions, the engineers had decided to try a new kind of trajectory. Previously, all spacecraft had been launched in a straight shot to the destination, but as a result, they had to fight directly against gravity, wasting fuel. This gravity drag limited the size of the spacecraft and magnified any errors in the computers’ aim. To limit losses, JPL would first launch Ranger into orbit around Earth and then, when the spacecraft was in the right position, perform a midcourse maneuver in which a second rocket would fire, sending the ship to the m
oon. It was a daring strategy, and the women composed their new trajectories with care.

  One month after the ship’s design was frozen in place and the trajectories set, the team at JPL received some unpleasant news. The Ranger spacecraft, once seen as grossly overweight, could stand to gain a few pounds. In fact, cutting the seventy-five pounds from the cone-shaped structure had been a mistake. In the rushed frenzy to capture the moon, they had shed needed weight. Ranger would have to leave Earth in an emaciated state, not an ideal beginning for the perilous mission.

  Running a month late, on August 23, 1961, the first Ranger blasted off from Cape Canaveral. The Atlas missile performed well and launched the spacecraft into a low orbit around Earth. Next, the upper stage, the Agena, was supposed to reignite to send the rocket into a higher orbit. But a faulty switch circuit prevented this from happening, stranding the spacecraft in low orbit. It was a poor place to test Ranger, since the spacecraft traveled through a ninety-minute day-night cycle, not optimal for the solar-powered ship. It performed as well as it possibly could, unfolding its solar panels and straightening itself out into its unusual three-axis design, like a giant tripod in the sky. The mission, however, was mostly a failure. The ship plummeted to its doom on August 31.

  Even on the ground, the air force’s Agena rocket was causing trouble, and JPL had to push the next test of Ranger to November because of problems they encountered with production and reliability. But when November came, the Agena once again failed to reignite, and Ranger, so carefully built in Pasadena, burned up in the atmosphere a mere six hours after its launch. At JPL the engineers and computers were frustrated. If Project Vega hadn’t been canceled, it would be the Vega rocket they had designed powering the upper stage. They couldn’t help but feel that if they were using their own rocket, they would have better luck with it, or would at least be in control of their failures. It was easy to blame a rocket that had been designed by the air force and built by a private contractor, the nearby Lockheed Corporation, for their troubles. While they waited for the kinks in the launch vehicle to be fixed by Lockheed, the engineers and computers found themselves drawn to the Venus and Mars missions.

  Far away from the failures of the Ranger, Barbara was about to give birth. As the due date grew nearer, Harry wished for a girl. He was forty and not sure he could keep up with an exuberant boy who might be even more rambunctious than he was as a child. Barbara didn’t have a preference, but as the days passed, she was getting impatient for the baby to arrive.

  Barbara’s water broke in the wee hours of October 9, 1960, and she and Harry headed for the hospital. While Barbara struggled through a long labor, Harry was desperate to find a television. The hours dragged on in the little waiting room, crowded with other fathers, and his mind turned to baseball. When Harry mentioned the World Series game to Barbara’s obstetrician, he confessed that he too was desperate to see it, and they searched until they found a TV. It was Game Four, the Pittsburgh Pirates versus the New York Yankees. Absorbed by the game, the pair kept their eyes on Yankee Stadium, where the game remained scoreless until the bottom of the fourth. Mickey Mantle struck out and Yogi Berra ground out before their teammate Bill Skowron hit a home run. The game suddenly had become a nail-biter when the doctor was called back into the delivery room. Harry snapped back to reality. He was about to become a father.

  As the Pirates narrowly beat the Yankees, 3–2, Barbara cuddled her baby girl, who had weighed in at nine pounds six ounces. Harry wasn’t allowed in the same room as the baby; fathers weren’t given the luxury of holding their little ones so soon. Instead he fell instantly in love as he watched her through the glass of the nursery, mesmerized. They named her Karen Marie.

  Barbara cradled Karen in her arms, breathing in her newborn smell. She looked in her eyes and felt an intense love unlike any she had ever experienced. Once home, Karen happily cooed in her parents’ embrace. Still, Barbara had her hands full. The baby was so much work. Luckily, Harry did his share. He fed her bottles and swaddled her in blankets. He changed her diapers in the middle of the night, dipping the heavy cloth in the toilet before putting it in the big, stinky bin the diaper-delivery service gave them. One night he was so exhausted he fell asleep while rinsing the diaper. Barbara found him on the bathroom floor and couldn’t hide her giggles as she shook him awake, the dirty diaper still in his hand. The nights were the longest. They paced the halls of their small one-bedroom Pasadena apartment, singing lullabies to try to get Karen back to sleep. Sometimes Barbara stopped at the window and looked out at the night sky. The moon and stars were out there, shining brightly, but her future was no longer tied to exploring them.

  Helen had barely finished congratulating Barbara when she realized she was pregnant too. She was excited but also worried that she wasn’t ready to be a mother. She had just started her job as supervisor and didn’t want to leave. Exhilarated by the news, Arthur supported his wife and promised her he’d do whatever she needed to make things work. With no maternity leave available, Helen and Arthur had to plan carefully. If she took a leave of absence, her job wouldn’t be waiting for her when she got back. Employers argued that too many women vanished after taking a leave. Instead, she would use her saved vacation time and sick leave to be home with the baby. When those ran out, she’d come back to the lab.

  Patrick was born in 1961, only months after Barbara’s baby. Helen was in love, gazing in awe at his soft round cheeks and tiny fingers and toes. But as much as she adored their child, she missed the lab. She wanted to have it all: the experience of motherhood and a fulfilling career. Seven weeks after giving birth she was back at JPL. She was thankful to have her family living close by. Her mom was able to watch Patrick while she was at work. Because Helen was confident that he was in good hands, it was easier to take up where she had left off. And now that she was back at JPL, she knew she needed people she could rely on—she needed Barbara.

  When Karen was seven months old, Barbara got a phone call. “Merrilyn Gilchrist’s leaving. Do you want to come back to work in my group?” Helen asked. Barbara gave it some thought before answering. In 1960, a working mother was the exception to the rule: only 25 percent of married American mothers with children under the age of eighteen were in the workforce. Especially for mothers of infants, pursuing a career was considered peculiar. On the other hand, Barbara certainly missed the lab and her work there. And while the computers had to work late nights during a launch, most of the time the hours were flexible. She also thought about Harry. He wanted to change jobs and had been planning to go back to school to obtain a real estate license. If she worked, it would take some of the financial pressure off them. With a mix of excitement and nervousness, Barbara called Helen and told her yes, she’d come back. Then she started calling babysitters.

  Barbara found she wasn’t the only computer returning. Melba Nead, one of the first ones hired at JPL, was also back. Melba had left JPL in 1950 to work for North American Aviation and was now bringing her expertise, gained from years of working in private industry, back to the lab. In the intervening years she had learned modern computer programming, applied the software design to the development of nuclear-reactor codes, and become a full-fledged engineer.

  And there were more new girls. Janet Davis and Joanie Lee both started in the lab. Helen was off the day Janet interviewed, and Janet had found meeting with Dr. Gates intimidating. She had just graduated with her master’s degree in math from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, today known as the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, world-renowned for its engineering program. Her credentials were impressive, and she was a natural for the job. Dr. Gates, however, on hearing that she was a newlywed, was contemptuous. Although he hired her, he added dismissively at the end of her interview, “You won’t last long.” It was something that would not have happened under Barbara’s or Macie Roberts’s leadership. Joanie, a recent graduate from the University of Southern California with a degree in mathematics, fared better. Perhaps her unmarried status ma
de her appear a more stable candidate to Dr. Gates.

  The women were now hard at work on the Mariner program, the favorite child at JPL. Similar to Ranger, it used an Atlas-Agena launch vehicle, but unlike the moon probe, Mariner was bound for Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Everyone was excited to work on it.

  The Mariner program would construct ten spacecraft, all bound for Earth’s closest neighbors in the solar system. The design would be similar to that of Ranger, with solar panels that opened up to face the sun and provide continuous power, and a large antenna that would point back home. The spacecraft didn’t spin like the Pioneer moon probes but, as in Ranger, were stabilized by a three-axis system. Engineers developed Mariner and Ranger side by side, and the rival projects, despite the obvious closeness in their designs, were creating tension. While the engineers were divided into Ranger or Mariner teams, the computers were united, working on the missions simultaneously.

  Still, the women were feeling the tension between work and home life. Helen found herself exhausted at the end of the day, struggling to find the energy to cook dinner and take care of the baby. Her parents, getting on in years, were having trouble keeping up with the infant’s demands, and Helen worried that she and Arthur would have to find different child care. Barbara also found the schedule of a working mom hectic. Harry would drop off Karen with the babysitter in the mornings while she went into the lab early. In the afternoons, she couldn’t wait to see her baby but was soon overwhelmed with the day-to-day chores that awaited her at home. There was no happy balance, only the will to see things through.