Rise of the Rocket Girls
Page 29
Giuseppe Columbo’s role in Mariner 10 is described in Robert S. Kraemer, Beyond the Moon: A Golden Age of Planetary Exploration, 1971–1978 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2000).
The percentage of women receiving engineering degrees in 1970 is published by the National Center for Education Statistics, Statistical Analysis Report, 2013.
Caltech opening its doors to undergraduate women in 1970 is reported on the Caltech alumni website (http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/news/2014/5/12/remembering-a-milestone) and in Amy Sue Bix, Girls Coming to Tech!: A History of American Engineering Education for Women (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).
Chapter 11: Men Are from Mars
All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.
The results of Mariner 10’s mission are reported in James A. Dunne and Eric Burgess, The Voyage of Mariner 10: Mission to Venus and Mercury (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1978).
Telemetry from Mariner Venus/Mercury 1973 is described in J. T. Hatch and J. W. Capps, “Real-Time High-Rate Telemetry Support of Mariner 10 Operations,” JPL DSN Progress Report 42–23, 1974, and Bruce Murray and Eric Burgess, Flight to Mercury (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
Mariner 10 did detect a tenuous atmosphere on Mars, one unlike typical thick planetary atmospheres. Mercury’s atmosphere is considered an exosphere, in which the density is so low that the molecules don’t behave like a gas anymore. Further information can be found in A. L. Broadfoot et al., “Mariner 10: Mercury Atmosphere,” Geophysical Research Letters, 3(10) (1976).
Sylvia’s paper, which she co-wrote with Roger D. Bourke, Ralph F. Miles Jr., Paul A. Penzo, and Richard A. Wallace, and which bears her name, Sylvia L. Van Dillen, is “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977: The Mission Frame,” Astronautics and Aeronautics, November 1, 1972.
The Blue Marble photo of Earth was taken during Apollo 17, as explained in Don Nardo, The Blue Marble: How a Photo Revealed Earth’s Fragile Beauty (Mankato, MN: Capstone), 2014.
Nixon’s formative role in NASA is explored in John M. Logsdon, After Apollo?: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Perspective on the German Amerika Bomber proposal can be found in Alan Axelrod, Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015).
The history of Skylab is recounted in Pamela E. Mack, ed., From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Division, 1998).
The Soyuz 11 disaster is recalled in John F. Burns, “Emerging New Details Indicate Soyuz Trouble,” New York Times, December 14, 1982, and “The Crew That Never Came Home: The Misfortunes of Soyuz 11,” Space Safety, April 28, 2013.
The ability of SEASAT to detect submarines is detailed in William J. Broad, “U.S. Loses Hold on Submarine-Exposing Radar Technique,” New York Times, May 11, 1999.
The Viking mission, including the quote from Harold Masursky, “Computers are just like wearing shoes,” etc., is described in Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958–1978—The NASA History (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2009).
Considerations affecting the trajectory of the Viking mission are explained in Douglas J. Mudgway, “Viking Mission Support,” JPL Technical Report 32–1526, 1976.
The landing of Viking 2 is described in Walter Sullivan, “Viking 2 Lander Settles on Mars and Sends Signal,” New York Times, September 4, 1976.
The use of the DSN for tracking Viking is explained in F.H.J. Taylor, “Deep Space Network to Viking Orbiter Telecommunications Performance During the Viking Extended Mission, November 1976 through February 1978,” JPL DSN Progress Report 42–25, 1978.
The story of how Voyager got its name is explained by Charley Kohlhase in David W. Swift, Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997).
Voyager’s “anxiety attack” and launch malfunctions are described in Bruce Murray, Journey into Space: The First Thirty Years of Space Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
Chapter 12: Look Like a Girl
All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.
The Voyager mission is described in Stephen J. Pyne, Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery (New York: Viking, 2010), and Dan Vergano, “Voyager,” National Geographic, August 18, 2014, which also includes Bradford Smith’s quote, “You count them.”
The problem of Voyager 2’s stuck platform and its subsequent solution by the accidental command of a flight engineer are reported in Associated Press, “Accident Frees Voyager 2 Camera; Now, Will It Work?,” Miami News, August 27, 1981.
Details of the Challenger disaster are described in Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), and “Report to the President by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident,” June 6, 1986.
Roger Boisjoly wrote in a memo on July 31, 1985, National Archives, identifier 596263: “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.”
The role of Boisjoly and Allan J. McDonald in the Challenger disaster is explained in David E. Sanger, “A Year Later, Two Engineers Cope with Challenger Horror,” New York Times, January 28, 1987.
The history of the microprocessor can be found in Robert Slater, Portraits in Silicon (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
The role of Jack Kilby in the development of the microchip is described in T. R. Reid, The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).
A history of the Altair 8800 can be found in Robert M. Collins, Transforming America: Politics and Culture During the Reagan Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
Stephen Wozniak is quoted as saying, “The whole vision of a personal computer popped in my head,” etc., in Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon and Schuster, 2011).
The antenna failure on Galileo is explained in J. George et al., “Galileo System Design for Orbital Operations,” Digital Avionics Systems Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, 1994, and Jean H. Aichele, ed., “Galileo, the Tour Guide: A Summary of the Mission to Date,” JPL Progress Report D–13554, 1996.
More information on the Galileo mission can be found in David M. Harland, Jupiter Odyssey: The Story of NASA’s Galileo Mission (London: Springer, 2000), and Daniel Fischer, Mission Jupiter: The Spectacular Journey of the Galileo Spacecraft (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001).
The CRAF project and its budget considerations are discussed in Roger D. Launius, ed., Exploring the Solar System: The History and Science of Planetary Exploration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Peter J. Westwick, Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976–2004 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
More information on Cassini can be found in Michael Meltzer, The Cassini–Huygens Visit to Saturn: An Historic Mission to the Ringed Planet (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2015).
The Magellan mission is described in Westwick, Into the Black.
More detail about the Mars missions can be found in Erik M. Conway, Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
The metric-system mix-up that doomed the Mars climate orbiter is explained in “Mars Climate Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report,” November 10, 1999, and “Report on the Loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter Mission,” EDS–D18441, November 11, 1999.
The Polar Lander’s demise is detailed in Bruce Moomaw and Cameron Park, “Was Polar Lander
Doomed by Fatal Design Flaw?,” SpaceDaily, February 16, 2000.
More information on the Mars rovers can be found in Stephen Squyres, Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet (New York: Hyperion, 2005), and Rod Pyle, Curiosity: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014).
In addition to a personal interview, Donna Shirley is quoted as saying, “Everything was going so smoothly and all of a sudden we realized it was all women,” etc., in Kenneth Change, “Making Science Fact, Now Chronicling Science Fiction,” New York Times, June 15, 2004.
Information about Sue’s work on the Juno mission to Jupiter can be found in one of her papers, co-written with M. Soriano et al.: “Spacecraft-to-Earth Communications for Juno and Mars Science Laboratory Critical Events,” Aerospace Conference, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Big Sky, Montana, 2012.
Voyager’s nuclear battery and lifetime are explained in William J. Broad, “Voyager’s Heartbeat Is Nuclear Battery,” New York Times, August 26, 1989.
Carl Sagan named one of his books—Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994)—after the last picture Voyager 1 took, a picture that was taken at his suggestion.
Epilogue
All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.
A reunion of the women who worked as computers was held at JPL in October 2012.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
January 1958: Launch Day
PART I: 1940s Chapter 1: Up, Up, and Away
Chapter 2: Headed West
PART II: 1950s Chapter 3: Rockets Rising
Chapter 4: Miss Guided Missile
Chapter 5: Holding Back
Chapter 6: Ninety Days and Ninety Minutes
Chapter 7: Moonglow
PART III: 1960s Chapter 8: Analog Overlords
Chapter 9: Planetary Pull
Chapter 10: The Last Queen of Outer Space
PART IV: 1970s–Today Chapter 11: Men Are from Mars
Chapter 12: Look Like a Girl
Epilogue
Photos
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Nathalia Holt
Notes
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Nathalia Holt
Cover design by Allison J. Warner
Cover photograph of women courtesy NASA / JPL-Caltech; rocket by SuperStock / Getty Images
Author photograph by Steph Stevens
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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