The Women of NASA...and Hidden Figures:

paddoboy

Valued Senior Member
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-women-nasa-space.html

How the women of NASA made their mark on the space program:

"The Civil Rights Act had just passed and the slide rule was giving way to computers when Frances "Poppy" Northcutt arrived at NASA's Houston campus in 1965, eager to join the space race. But her job title stunned her: "computress."

Northcutt, then 22 and fresh out of the University of Texas at Austin with a mathematics degree, soon learned that at NASA, men were engineers, women "computresses" or "human computers," with less status and less pay.

But Northcutt persevered, and three years later, during the Apollo 8 mission, she would become the first woman to work in Mission Control.

As the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing approaches, Northcutt and other women who helped America's space efforts are reflecting on their often unheralded roles—and the indignities they endured. Many were lone pioneers, fighting behind the scenes to not only build their own careers, but to advance those of other women and minorities at NASA.

When Northcutt started at the agency, she knew nothing of fellow computresses at NASA's Langley, Va., research center—African American female mathematicians made famous in the book and 2016 film "Hidden Figures." What Northcutt knew was that she wanted to be part of the team putting men on the moon".

more at link........
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Also in a similar vane, I saw a movie on "Stan" if memory serves me correctly around 18 months ago, with regards to three Black American women and NASA in those early heady 60's days.
The movie was entitled "Hidden Figures"
Top Story!
The Official Trailer....


 
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first woman to work in Mission Control
... the little woman helped by making sandwiches
if you asked the men working in mission control about the other men working in mission control, would they just say they "helped" or would they define them as being an integral part of the success ?

she wanted to be part of the team putting men on the moon.
but she never managed to finish, there is still many men left on earth.
yet she persisted
 
... the little woman helped by making sandwiches
if you asked the men working in mission control about the other men working in mission control, would they just say they "helped" or would they define them as being an integral part of the success ?
Ummm, the article is about women working at NASA and the difficulties they experienced during that period. The Movie concerns three Black American Mathematicians that overcame those difficulties and became an integral part of the space program.
I don't believe the Movie is hiding anything, and the article appears to be in the same vane. Or perhaps I'm just missing your humour/sarcasm facetiousness?

but she never managed to finish, there is still many men left on earth.
yet she persisted
Wow!! :rolleyes:
 
I don't believe the Movie is hiding anything

the article

my point...
using the word "help" is vastly different to using the word "critical"

i would suggest, Katherine Johnson was "critical"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson
Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (born August 26, 1918) is an African-American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.[2] During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped the space agency pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks.

i think the person who wrote the article is being disrespectful by using the word "helped".
A Journalist should be well educated in such matters, more soo when it deals with such issues.

like walking up to someone and saying "excuse me fatty! can you tell me what time the next buss is please?

perfectly honest and accurate ?

... everyone knows ...'what' ?

... hey skinny legs, tell fat ass to move to the side i cant see the movie screen because of their stupid big hair style...why dont you be be helpful for a change !

"i was just asking them to move because they were blocking my view & i paid good money to see the movie so they should not be allowed to stop me"

"why cant i ask someone when the next buss is. if they didnt want to have me talk at them they would not stand at the buss stop"

assertions of cultural compliance ?

who decides what is rude ?
the person doing the talking ?

being dismissive of scientific excellence while claiming to be a science reporter ?
hhmm...
i call bullshit on that publication
i think its covert something...i stopped reading it years ago after being confronted on several occasions with its clear bias.
a shimmer of its truth coming through in singular moments.
They should have changed the editor years ago, but they didn't.
they kept the same style with the same bias.
almost as if it is edited by creationists parading as scientists.
and that was where i walked away from it, i think i blocked it on my website blocker to prevent getting hits on pop up results for science searches.

dont take it personally, but i suggest you ignore reading psyorg.
i think its shit


I haven't seen this movie, yet. It's on my list!
i rate it a must watch with no interruptions
 
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‘Tis a good film, for sure. Haven’t read up with regard to what extent the events were true (like running half a mile or so to use a segregated toilet) but the film works, sends a good message, and is enjoyable.
 
(like running half a mile or so to use a segregated toilet)
This looks interesting
https://www.quora.com/Would-restroo...e-50s-early-60s-since-it-was-federal-property
Robert Frost, works at NASA
Answered Feb 7, 2017 · Upvoted by James Nevik, contractor at NASA (1992-present) · Author has 7.2k answers and 147.4m answer views
While the events of the movie are largely accurate, there is a lot of compression of events.

Katherine Johnson started work at Langley in 1953, eight years before John Glenn’s flight and five years before NASA came into existence.

Mary Jackson began working at Langley in 1951. She became NASA’s first black female engineer in 1958, just after NASA was created.

Dorothy Vaughan started even earlier, in 1943. In fact, the film combines two events for her. She became a supervisor in 1949, before Katherine and Mary were even hired, and moved into digital computing at about the time depicted in the film.

NACA set up the West Area Computing Unit in 1943, as a result of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 that prohibited racial discrimination in the defense industry. However, although that order allowed NACA to set up that team of black women computers, Langley was in Virginia and subject to the state Jim Crow laws that claimed separate was equal.

NASA superseded NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1958. While NACA had held onto those wartime segregated facilities, those were abolished immediately upon the institution of NASA.

So, although Katherine had to use a segregated bathroom under NACA, she did not during the time she supported the Mercury missions for NASA.
 
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