Holt organized the book’s twelve chapters by decade, starting with the 1940s and coming up to the present. While describing the work the women mathematicians were doing for the different missions JPL conducted, Holt also explores how changing technology shaped the computers’ work. In particular, when JPL introduced manual calculators and bulky IBM computers, the women had to learn new skills. By the time NASA started work on the Apollo Moon program, the women were keeping pace by taking classes at nearby Caltech to learn the newest programming languages, like FORTRAN. Holt notes that as the space program grew more sophisticated, so did the skills of the women whose stories she tells. Although they were hired as computers, the arrival of electronic computing technology did not diminish their value to JPL. In fact, women computers became the programmers for these new machines (as seen in Hidden Figures when Dorothy Vaughn programmed the Langley computers). These women were essential in making sure the male engineers’ designs were successful. Holt points out that by the 1960s, the women’s titles changed as well—from computers to engineers.
Holt is breaking relatively new ground in The Rise of the Rocket Girls. While the history of women scientists (including those in mathematics) is not new, it seems that part of the reason the computers at JPL are still less well-known lies in the nature of the laboratory’s work. Historically, JPL’s mission has largely focused on the development and launch of probes and satellites, such as the Ranger and Pioneer programs that sent robotic vehicles to the Moon so NASA could scout possible safe landing sites for the Apollo crews. While their work was essential to the success of the human spaceflight program, it was neither sexy nor patriotic in the same way that putting astronauts into space was for the American public. JPL’s mission and its computers have historically been more focused on exploration of the Solar System than on human spaceflight. Consequently, their stories have remained largely unknown even though they have one of the longest histories, going back to the 1930s. Holt’s book makes an important contribution to changing that narrative.
One of the valuable contributions that Holt’s book makes is that the narrative was built upon oral histories with many of the women highlighted in the book. While still grounded in archival research, Holt’s book includes the personal stories and experiences of these women that cannot be found in an archive. Holt’s book creates tension when launches or missions went awry; readers will feel the joy and excitement when the women witnessed the culmination of their work end in a successful mission. But readers will also see the ups and downs of working women in this era: weddings, births, the death of a newborn, and divorces. Holt constantly reminds the readers that these women, while talented and highly skilled in their jobs, were living regular lives when they left the office.
If the book has a weakness, it is that the science behind the missions these women helped make possible is often only given a cursory explanation, is not always clear, and, occasionally, is inaccurate. For example, the Galileo mission, which sent a spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter, had to be reworked after the space shuttle Challenger disaster because the original trajectory calculations were for a launch date that fell to the wayside as NASA recovered from the accident. In discussing the changes, Holt said, “The original upper-stage rocket selected to carry Galileo and the space shuttle crew into space was now deemed too dangerous.”[3] But that is not how the system worked. The Galileo spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Atlantis. Once in orbit, the shuttle crew deployed the Galileo spacecraft. It was only then that the upper-stage rocket sent Galileo on its way toward Jupiter; the space shuttle crew was not directly affected nor transported by Galileo’s upper-stage rocket. Admittedly, these are minor issues and do not affect the significance of the story Holt is telling. The limited scientific discussion does mean that the book as a whole is accessible to a large audience since a deeper familiarity of scientific and aerospace terminology and understanding is not necessary.
In short, Nathalia Holt’s book on the women of JPL and their contributions to the United States’ history in space is a welcome addition. JPL is only one of twenty NASA centers. The women and their contributions at each NASA center deserve attention and recognition. What Nathalia Holt has done with this book is remind readers that women’s work for NASA did propel us to the Moon and Mars.
