Chapter 7: Space Race, Take Two. Part 7: Problem With The Times.
Speaking of byproducts of space research, I remembered that another few issues I had to, if not solve, at least spearhead included the reusability of rocket parts as well as space junk. Despite being a commercial enterprise, SpaceX still managed to kick off another round of space race when it was first introduced, and one of the most important elements of space travel to have come out of this was the reusability of rocket parts. Though the company failed to launch men to Mars, it rekindled man's interest in space, and with the economic aspect of using parts of rockets multiple time instead of just letting them float in space or explode helped various countries and other companies to take the leap. The other issue, space junk, came into question a few years before SpaceX's rise. People realized that we were surrounded by debris just waiting to destroy our satellites, fall back on earth, or prevent us from leaving the planet.
Because of the Space Race, people were so focused on getting us to the moon that they forgot about the negative aspects of doing so, which led to the sky getting filled with a net of junk from the size of microscopic sand to dead satellites. We needed to avoid this if we want to have space stations in the atmosphere without risking everyone's life on board, as well as facilitate space transport.
My position as a "calculator" would not be enough to solve everything. I would first need to come up with reasons to talk about those issues. The reusability of rockets was more easily explained, and would probably appeal to them in a financial sense. If they don't have to build a rocket every time they want to send something or someone on the moon, they won't have to pay the whole price. Of course, this will lead to other problems, such as how can we get the parts back, where will the fall, who will control them, etc…, but just giving them the idea will help them move towards that direction. At least I hope it will. At this point I can't be certain of anything, and I don't have the same influence as Katherine will have in a few years.
One good way to improve my standing is making the astronauts reliant on me. For this, I think the space map will help quite a bit, as one of Katherine's most notable accomplishment was a system related to the observation of stars. At this point in time, it was just a bunch of ideas, calculations leading nowhere and a conjecture, but in about ten years time it would have become a road map to the safety of astronauts. This is one of the few things that I can help advance, since Cassie has it all memorized, and since Katherine had already started working on it, it will not come as something that comes from nowhere. Helping the Astronauts find their way easily means they won't get lost easily, which means they'll be safer. The men who will be launched in space will appreciate that, and this will probably give me a little wiggle room to my future projects.
Another way to give me more influence is to change people's perception of me. As I am, not a lot of people in boardroom take me seriously. I'm female, first, and in this chauvinistic work world, women are just not as good as men. Secondly, I'm black, so even white women who manage to make it somewhat high in echelons will try to put me down because of the color of my skin thanks to the still active segregation. To help resolve that, I have to turn to Dorothy. As such, I meet back with her in the cafeteria.
While walking toward her office after a very quick lunch, we gossip about the director, how it seems he wanted me out of NASA and how he looked at me. This was definitely not the first time he seemed to have done so and the white females around him had apparently had to face the same treatment as the black females. While this was a small consolation, I couldn't help but feel that there needed some change. First of all, this segregation problem would only get more difficult to circumvent the longer we dwell on it, but also this unfathomable sexism restricting women's opportunity in the advance of science. I think it wasn't until 1990 that the level of female engineering ph.D.'s attained 10%, which meant that 90% of the engineering phDs were distributed to men until 1990. In the land of opportunity and the 'winner' of the space race, I would consider it a miracle. How much faster would we have come to so many breakthroughs in innovation and science in those posts weren't restricted to half of the population? I needed to form a group. First of black coworkers, then female coworkers, then females. We needed to prove the world what we were capable of. We needed to give their shot to women in this time. So talking with Dorothy, we came up with a small ide of night school. She was already planning something similar by teaching herself FORTRAN and thinking of teaching it to other women in the West Area Computer division. But we needed to do more than just a computer language. We needed to teach them advanced mathematics, what we knew of rocket science, chemistry, metallurgy, etc… We needed to create a NASA school for women inside NASA. We had to start with our black sisters, because the Jim Crow Law were still in action, and required newly-hired African-American women to work separately from their Caucasian women counterparts. While this was an obstacle, as segregation worked both way, we needed to prove that the color of our skin didn't limit our capabilities before we showed the white ladies who also believed in this segregation the error of their ways. They needed to realize it themselves, that they would be abandoned if they didn't improve themselves while the inferior black girls were making themselves indispensable.
After one particularly refreshing talk, we came to Dorothy's 'office'. It was just a small desk, similar to everyone's in the West Area Computer room. The fact that she had became the center of the group in such a short while spoke highly of her managerial capabilities and incredible EQ. This would only factor positively to what was destined to come.
Her desk drawers were filled with notes concerning Fortran. She had started learning it even before some of the folks in NASA realized it would become the norm. The system felt primitive, but I had to resist the urge to say it out loud or make any comment. I needed to help her make a small breakthrough in her studies to accelerate the events. That was all. I decided to take a look at the punched card, and asked her if she couldn't try to prepare some in advance, with recurrently needed calculations. What I was asking her in reality was basically what the engineer would do with Fortran coding forms, printed on paper and intended to be used by programmers to prepare programs for punching onto cards by keypunch operators, but this idea wouldn't be used before a year or two, so it gave her a chance to make a small breakthrough in her mentality and capability. She would have come to the same conclusion, or even came to use the cards later on, but knowing of something similar to those coding forms before their introduction could only be positive for her and her studies.
She didn't seem to notice the importance of it, just putting it on a small piece of paper to check later, but it was fine with me. She was also an inspiration, and I knew I didn't have to push her to make those breakthroughs. So we came to my desk, which had a slightly bigger size. The original Katherine was already responsible for the calculation of trajectories of the Mercury Missions, along with the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. It would only be stupid to relegate her in a broom closet. Most of the paper on the desk were about those calculations, the future missions, etc…
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