Rocket Girls is based on Holt’s interviews of the female “human computers” of the early days of the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). The computers did the calculations, usually by hand, that were needed to help the engineers get the rockets and ultimately spacecraft into space and orbit. The men of the “Suicide Squad” (Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, and Ed Forman), affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, started experimenting with rockets in the mid-1930s and enlisted one of the wives, Barby Canright, to do their propulsion calculations. The members of the Suicide Squad went on to help found JPL and became famous aeronautical engineers. However, Canright quit when she had a baby, and that was the end of her career as a human computer. Her colleague, Macie Roberts, became manager of the computers and developed the policy of exclusively hiring women for the job, and went on to develop a large staff of women.
The book goes on to introduce the stories of many of the women whom Roberts hired. These women’s lives were similar to those of mothers today: they struggled with work and family obligations. Their struggle to overcome the mind-set against working mothers is briefly discussed. Unfortunately, the book gives little information about the math they performed and their technical accomplishments, leaving their careers an enigma.
Holt introduces some drama into the book as the women follow the course of funding decisions. Despite JPL’s leadership in rocketry, the United States funded a Navy program, Vanguard, as the US satellite program for the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958). As the Navy program struggled, JPL rejoined the race with the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and soon was first in the United States to put a satellite in space (following the Soviet Union’s Sputnik).
As JPL set a new course in exploring other planets in the solar system, a new drama emerged with the introduction of machine computers. Holt adequately explains how the women grappled with losing their jobs to automation.
I queried my father, a retired geophysicist, about whether he had come across such women computers in his career. “Yes, of course, we had them at Penn State when I was in graduate school (in the early 1960s). We would give them the calculations for our work, and they would hand back the results. They knew how to run those Friedan computers.” One woman was very talented and ultimately co-authored a paper with my father. Aside from a few such examples, the women computers remained in the background performing calculations.
JPL’s history with having women computers is still part of its lab culture today; JPL has a relatively high percentage of women engineers. Holt brings all the women together for a reunion—with all but one retired, it was a tearful and joyful event. These women had a lot to be proud of in how they contributed to space research. The fact that they did not boast about their accomplishments is also in line with the space culture, where the ratio of scientists/engineers to famous astronauts is literally in the range of 10,000 to 1.
The reader will get a different perspective about the space race. However, additional reference books are needed to help understand how all of the subsequent deep space programs fit together. A graph showing the programs’ names and the women who worked in them would have been helpful. The writing in the book often wanders aimlessly and could have been improved with additional editing.
While the book could have had a larger impact by going into more details about the technical work and by giving a better perspective on the computing roles for women, Holt manages to capture a history of women in science and engineering that is informative and comprehensive.
Reviewer: Karen Swider Lyons researches fuel-cell and battery materials and their integration into naval systems in Alexandria, Va., USA.
