From Missiles to the Moon to Mars - The Women Who Propelled Us

The riveting, astonishing and inspirational story of the women who took us to space starting in the 1940s and continuing through every NASA space mission. This is a record of immense importance and a story that was nearly lost. Yet it is an edge of your seat page turner. Looking at the monumental achievement of this group of women, particularly the nearly unfunded Voyager program that resulted in the only man made objects to reach interstellar space (still functioning 44 YEARS after launch) and almost uncountable scientific learnings. These women genuinely deserve a Nobel Prize for showing us where our Pale Blue Marble is.

Interesting read about the history of women in rocket science. Unfortunately I struggled with the writing style. At times the story seemed extremely choppy, as the author tried to show the women's professional and personal lives. It was jarring to switch randomly between scientific discussion and random mentions of the computers' divorces in the same paragraph with no elaboration. It really took away from the actual content.

Great story! The telling was a little disjointed (and the writing so-so)--it covered decades and often the timeline became disconnected--but all in all, a very good read about a group of extremely talented and creative women. The author did impart the camaraderie, the meaningful and purposeful work, and the opportunities they seized. At the end of their almost half-century careers, these dedicated and determined women could look back and say "I made a contribution to the world". An inspiration to us all to seek a career that fulfills.

First Documentary I've read in a Longgggg time. I liked the facts and was amazed at the part women from the 60's to the present played in space exploration. There are not enough stories about famous women in our history. Like any Documentary the facts can be somewhat dry from time to time but I had no problem finishing the book. A good read.

Great read about women who began breaking into professions usually the reserved for men. It is also a great review of the beginnings of the space program, it's successes and failures. If you have forgotten, or never knew, this history, reading this book brings it all back nicely. Very good writing and easy to read. You can put it down, but you also want to pick it up again.

The story of the rocket girls (first women "engineers" at JPL) is definitely worth telling, unfortunately the author wrote a pretty amateurish book about them that is both disorganized and lacking in cohesive flow. Far too many sentences (perhaps 25% in some chapters) in the boook start with "Despite, Although, or While", making the process of reading the book laborious and a bit of a chore at times. Also, every chapter seems to have dozens of random sentences that introduce a new point or topic out of no where, and goes no where with it.

I am very disappointed - this should be the west coast version of the story in Hidden Figures. The story telling and writing are poor - I was not engaged by the book and it was a struggle to persist to the end. There are several inaccuracies which makes me distrust the accuracy of the entire book. Where was the editor? Why wasn't this fixed before publishing?

I really enjoyed this well written non-fiction story. It's a wonderful account to the lives of several women in the workforce in the 40's-50's. :) The hardcover is nice, and the book jacket is a wonderful addition.

The underlying historical facts are fascinating, but the narrative could be more well-written. Too many erratic skips between the scientific achievements and the personal lives of the characters. While the burdens the charachters had to bear as women in a pro-male workplace are important, the lack of depth in describing their scientific achievements tends to sell them short.

First, I must say that the stories of these ladies' work, lives and continuing effect on American space exploration were brilliant revelations to me. I'm glad I read about these. However, I found the book far too chatty, a bit murky chronology-wise, and a bit short on deeper context. I'd have enjoyed more on the applied science involved, the actual mathematical problems worked, and the greater cultural context of the times. This was more like diary entries than it was a book like "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," and I suppose my expectations were for the latter. Still very worthwhile a read.

This was a turkey insipiring tale of the women computers. Before reading this book I knew they existed because my ex-husband worked at NASA. I had no idea how integral to the space program they were.

This book was very poorly written. I haven't been able to finish it but I have heard about other books on a similar topic. This one was very narrow. It discussed only women involved with JPL. Apparently women were involved in other aspects of the rocket industry as well. But really, the writing was terrible.

Very disappointing book. The concept was brilliant. Before, during, and after World War Two, in an era where electronic computers were virtually unavailable, at places like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the very complex mathematical calculations necessary to develop rockets were performed by hand. And most of those human 'calculators' were women. What should have been a fascinating study at the intersection of feminism and science became s tedious, boring narrative and example of poor storytelling. This book is a loss to history.

An interesting story (of a group of unsung female "computers" who calculated trajectories, rocket fuel loads and the like for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the early days of the space program), but I found the book disorganized, poorly written, and shallowly researched. The author gives the strong impression that she doesn't actually understand, or indeed care much about, the math and science that her "rocket girls" performed, or its importance to the projects that it supported. Rather, we have our noses continually rubbed in the fact that they can do it at all, overcoming the anti-female bias of the time and developing into valued peers of their male colleagues, even while performing in such feminine roles as raising a family, shopping for nylons, and in some cases winning beauty contests. The result of all this breathless gushing, for this reader at least, was that far from celebrating (though never actually describing) these women's accomplishments the book actually had a demeaning effect.

The first part of the book I read was where it covered the period that I worked at JPL. I was the 2nd hire at the JPL Computer Graphics Laboratory, and worked there from July 1977 to September 1981, when I went off to graduate school. The CGL made the NASA Jupiter and Saturn encounter movies for Voyager and other missions, and also applications for spacecraft telemetry analysis. For its initial years, the CGL was primarily funded by the Voyager project, which means we spent most of our time working on various aspects of mission support.

The author’s description of the Voyager mission shows some serious misunderstanding. Contrary to what the book says, this mission was originally planned in the early ’60’s. It was indeed called the Grand Tour (of the outer planets), but by the time Congress was done with its design, it had been whittled down to Jupiter and Saturn, thus the name “MJS” (Mariner Jupiter Saturn). By 1977 the mission had been set for nearly a decade. It was NOT frantically recalculated at the last minute as the book describes.

Another point is the way the book describes the women at JPL as being the saviors of all the projects. The missions at JPL skipped gender. They were teams. Just as you would find the male Chuck Lawson managing the mathematics group, you would find the female Helen Ling managing the mission visualization group. Emphasizing one class over another does a disservice to everybody. Unlike the author, I was actually in the middle of JPL for years, and I’ll state blatantly that everyone I knew there was dedicated to and contributed to their missions irrespective of everything else.

I didn't bother reading the rest of the book.

The subject was fascinating, well researched and overdue for sharing. Despite that, I found myself frustrated with the writing and how the science/math was explained. The writing level was subpar and people or concepts thrown in were forgotten as quickly as they were introduced. Why did she explain the history of microprocessors? I didn't feel like that was really necessary. Yes, technology has significantly advanced but a high school level summary was not needed.

I am likely nitpicking with this but I felt that the author completely glossed over how difficult the math was that these women were doing. Some of it was simple and basic physics/engineering concepts but calculating trajectories with several independent rates of change happening simultaneously is no joke. The author lumped it all together like each calculation is just a baking ingredient.

I realize I sound overly negative for a book that I did find very interesting but I don't feel like the writing did the subject and these amazing women justice. It is worth reading, though, if you have an interest in the history of our space programs.

Synopsis: This is truly a fantastic (true) story of the women who launched America into space.
During the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Instead, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and brains, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. Known as "human computers"-- these amazing woman broke boundaries of both gender and science.

Pros: Appreciated the extensive research, documentation and interviews with the elite members of the ground breaking work these women accomplished. Also applaud the realistic problems brought forth these women had too, like balancing work and marriage and raising children, being a working women that didn't meet with societies role and the difficulty of gender and racial discrimination. They over came all that to develop strong friendships, accurate work and strong drive to be the best. The addition of photos is priceless.

Cons: Nothing

Cover art: 5 out of 5. Great use of color and the photo of the women on the cover is fantastic.

I was greatly disappointed with this book. I love reading about women in STEM, but this was painful. The information regarding the women was barely there, drowning under the author's unnecessary remarks. I can't image reading a work on male scientists & having to endure constant descriptions of what they were wearing, how they did their hair/makeup, or having to "prepare" for "emotions." I also didn't appreciate the women talking to one another being referred to as "gossip."

I expected more from this work. I can't recommend it, especially not to women & girls interested in the subject.

The 30 pages of source references as well as the many technical errors make me think the author just read a bunch of books and cobbled this one together without really understanding a lot of what she wrote. For example, the Shuttle did not have an upper stage, the Saturn V did not use hypergolic propellants and silicon is not composed of sand. While I enjoyed the personal stories, I got tired of reading about the women doing calculations. I wondered if they were just cranking out numbers or if they were coming up with the formulas. I spent a summer cranking out calculations on a Fridan and it was duller than dull.

I give this a 4.5
You know when you find a book that takes you into your past and helps you to want to learn more? That for me is this book. I enjoyed meeting, learning and being encouraged by the female "computers" of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

My father was a computer programer, reading about the different computers, different ways of programing those electronic computers from Pin punch cards to, FORTRAN to BASIC programing language it was a blast from the past for me. I still own punch cards that my dad saved from the trash heap of change. Those punch cards served as late note pleas to allow me to enter class without a tardy, a pass from missing a day at school and gathering homework on those months that I needed to be monitored because I wasn't turning work in. Those punchcards meant to much to me and still do. I use them diligently, once they are gone, there are no more to gather... It is a reminder of a history gone.

Barby Canright was JPL's first computer before it was JPL and was just a nerdy boys rocket group consisting of 4 men and Barby. These men attended CALTECH but breathed rocketry. :0)

The women of the JPL computing division were intelligent, hard working and not equal to their male counterparts if doing other work at the lab. There in the Computing division they were top dog. They forecasted the paths of war missles, satellites and rockets to the moon. Also, helped solved design flaws (such as Appollo I's door restriction that kept Ed White, Cafferty and ???? From escaping during a horrific fire.)

These women were expected to quit their jobs when they got married and started a family. Most of the JPL ladies did as expected then returned because they were usually too smart to just throw dinner parties, take care of their children and run the daily household. They were going crazy not being involved.
Modern electronic computers were starting to come to use while the young JPL computers were adjusting to the possibility of being outsourced to the machines. These women made themselves non-expendable by being the first ones to learn the procedures, languages and foibles of those machines. Continuing their careers with advanced college learning, encouraged by each other to become faster, smarter, more reliable. These women to me were superstars!!!

Can you imagine the satisfaction that they felt knowing they were doing something that made a significant impact on the world through out the 40's to today? I am in awe of these women who paved the way for other women to be NASA engineers and Astronauts.

The Rise of the Rocket Girls might have been a little technical for the average reader, however I thoroughly enjoyed the technicality. The look into their private lives, their careers and the friendships that they held for lifetimes was refreshing and uplifting. Little girls, women of my age group (oh, heck, all women) need to hear these stories more often.

The book is a great catalyst for the continued conversation of the need for females to excel in STEM programs.

Author Nathalia Holt did a fantastic job sharing the early history of missles and Pre-NASA Rockets, through an engaging story carried over decades of success, disappointment, death and the frustration that was felt for the women working at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory

This book has feed my desire to visit the JPL my next jaunt down to Southern California.

If you love Rockets, NASA, and Space this book will not disappoint you.

Once upon a time, computers didn't refer to machines running programs, but to people who did the computation work that were eventually relegated to those machines. Rise of the Rocket Girls is the story of the computer department at JPL. It's a great read and well worth your time.

That the computer department at JPL consisted entirely of women was not an accident but deliberate policy. The supervisor of the team, Marcie Roberts, had a policy that she only hired women. She would say to the women in her team:

"In this job you need to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog." (Kindle Loc. 3061)

As the department switched to electronic computers, the women involved trained and learned to write computer programs. What's document is interesting: the early IBMs were so unreliable that the engineers involved wouldn't trust the results unless it was a human who did the computation. It took several generations of improvements before the computers became good enough to be used. The first of such machines was even given a name by the department and became a valued part of the team. Subsequent generational iterations happened so quickly that the people no longer became attached to them:
The scientists reviewed the computer analysis and tried to make sense of it. Some of the students were surprised by how much of the operation required human interaction. They expected to see supercomputers instead of people doing all the work. Senior scientist Harold Masursky good-naturedly responded to one inquiry: “Computers are just like wearing shoes. You need them when you are walking on gravel, but they don’t get you across the gravel. (Kindle Loc. 2922)
Note that JPL as an eventual government agency focused on research instead of financial results, didn't hand out stock options. That didn't actually matter: the programmers were paid by the hour, which given the usual extreme overtime hours required of programmers actually meant that they were paid much better than if they were salaried:
The women worked late nights and weekends on Mariner, desperately checking their trajectories and programs. The hours were exhausting, especially for new mothers Barbara and Helen, but their paychecks were worth it. As hourly employees they were both earning impressive incomes, outstripping their husbands, thanks to the long hours Mariner required. (Kindle Loc. 2154)
Having an all-woman department at JPL meant that in the early days the lab could run beauty contests:
As odd as it seems by today’s standards, the beauty contest was a result of JPL’s progressive hiring practices. As the bouquets were handed out and an attractive woman crowned the winner, the competition was unintentionally highlighting the presence of educated young women working at JPL. After all, other laboratories would have found it impossible to hold such a contest in the 1950s; they simply didn’t hire enough women. (Kindle Loc. 949)
An interesting difference between biographies of men and women is that while men's biographies rarely mention their personal lives (like raising kids, etc), in women's biographies that's covered in detail. Nevertheless, the book provides ample coverage of the various missions that JPL ran, including the practice of planning dual missions for redundancy.

It's also well-written and provides a compelling narrative. Highly recommended.

This book details the history of the Jet Propulsion Lab with a particular emphasis on the women computers and engineers that played key roles in the success of the lab. These women were true pioneers, using their superb mathematical prowess to hand calculate key data needed for the development of jet engines and later rockets and space missions. Later, they were the experts in the machinery and the early mechanical computers. These women broke many barriers, moving towards gender equality and working after marriage and children. The stories of these women are based on extensive interviews and research and provide a novel insight into the early aerospace industry and the unique culture at JPL. These women’s work made the advances of the American space program possible and continued to provide key guidance to the programs that led to some of the major achievements of the unmanned space program.

Nathalia Holt's RISE OF THE ROCKET GIRLS is an immersive, evocative narrative that effectively brings an all-too-forgotten history to life.

Or herstory, shall I say, or ourstory, or perhaps just history as it should be -- because Holt's deeply researched, skillfully written text highlights precisely how fully women have been erased from taught history. Women's erasure from and oppression within STEAM fields has been happening since the inception of those fields, and continues to happen. Thankfully, women who go ahead and fight to live the lives they choose have existed just as long.

Holt traces the lives of some of the most prominent female aeronautical scientists, who navigated the cosmos in tandem with navigating institutionalized misogyny --- and made tremendous strides to conquer both. Barbara Lewis (later Paulson), Janez Lawson, Helen Yee Chow (later Ling), Susan Finley and Susan Lundy each deserve their names to be just as recognizable as Buzz Aldrin’s or Carl Sagan’s. They compose the core of the “rocket girls,” the female scientists and engineers whose hard work, calculations and designs got us to the moon, Mars, and set the stage for the beyond. Many of them did not even have so much as a higher education degree to their name, largely because of the sexist structures of the recent past that still tarnish our present, limiting expectations and opportunities for women. What they did have was a love for the field, previously unrecognized talents for math and science, and a wanderlust that spanned distances greater than our atmosphere.

"Holt’s narrative is superbly readable. The text spans the 1940s through today, and the trajectory is as clearly plotted as her subjects’ spaceflight designs."

Holt’s narrative is superbly readable. The text spans the 1940s through today, and the trajectory is as clearly plotted as her subjects’ spaceflight designs. Her extensive research illuminates each step of the path of female scientists within NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), from its inception until now. She delves into issues of sexist hiring, gendered expectations, dress codes, the lack of maternity leave, working while pregnant, keeping your job after the baby, etc. She also deals with racism in the industry, and addresses how Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor affected the space race and JPL.

Within her clear historical and cultural analysis, Holt consistently tracks how being a woman shaped the experiences of these scientists. She’s never heavy-handed, only cleanly honest about how social and institutional sexism shaped their lives and how they managed to work and thrive within it --- while also setting important and powerful precedents for women in STEM today.

The book begins with two quotes. One is a beautiful excerpt from Ray Bradbury and Jonathan V. Post’s “To Sail Beyond the Sun,” emphasizing how science, in all its technical intricacies, is ultimately just curiosity --- castles in the sky we hope to live in, that we are ever building steps to, creating technology that will outlive us in the hopes that one day, as a species, we get there. The other is simply “I did not come to NASA to make history,” spoken by Sally Ride. None of the women Holt features took their jobs for the money, and certainly not for the recognition. They did it out of love of the science, and to build those steps towards those incredible, celestial castles. They succeeded in making the unknowable just a bit more tangible and in bringing us that much closer to understanding the darknesses far beyond the naked eye.

Now, though, it’s time to bring their names out of the abyss. Sally Ride did make history, and so did each and every one of these women. Their accomplishments among the heavens need to be recognized here on this planet, which ultimately is Holt’s mission. When we teach about the space race, we must teach the female computers who were computing the data that successfully sent human-made artifacts into space, entirely by hand. We must teach that it wasn’t too long ago --- well within the lifetimes of most of these women --- that a “computer” was simply “one who computes” and that many, many of them were not men.

For Holt’s featured women at JPL, their one real recourse to keep their jobs and perform them as expertly as they did was to work with the other female computers. This group of women not only became lifelong friends, they continued to inspire and look out for each other professionally, providing solidarity and institutional support. We can and should be doing better now --- STEAM and STEM fields need to recognize that women have always been here. We need to be acknowledged and treated with equality, both in present work environments and when accomplishments are documented for future generations.

RISE OF THE ROCKET GIRLS is brought even further to life by including original pictures and diagrams. Holt’s poignant narrative should be required reading for anyone who studies aeronautics, history or women’s rights.

Reviewed by Maya Gittelman

If you loved Hidden Figures, you'll love Rise of the Rocket Girls. Let me start by saying that math is NOT my area of expertise. Before starting the book, I feared there would be much mathematical or science terminology that would fly over my head. That was not the case. The author wove together the biographies of the women computers who helped send the US into outer space. It was phenomenal, easy to read, with easy explanations when needed. As a history teacher, I loved reading all of the background of the US struggle to match or stay up with the Soviets. Thank you for a great book, easy to read, enjoyable. I highly recommend!

This is one of my Read Harder 2017 books. Its my choice for task #13, a nonfiction book about technology. I had already read Hidden Figures and some anthologies about women scientists, so I knew we were up to more than most would assume back then. I listened to the audio book version from the library, read by Erin Bennet.

This is one of those covers that do a great job of showing you everything about the book but I still managed to misinterpret it. I had no idea that rockets were going as far as they were so early. It was fascinating to hear about the way the women went from being computers to programming them. It makes the whole process sound so natural. I also greatly appreciated the details on the way these women worked out family and career. I wouldn't have thought it all possible for the timeframe before I started reading more women's stories.

Overall, the story and narration held my attention but there was something a little off about it. It took me a little while to realize that it was read in a style that was reminiscent of the introductions to for the show The Desperate Housewives. While this wasn't a bad thing, I did constantly feel like I should be expecting some crazy plot twist.

This is a great books for anyone into herstories, or the history of rockets or space probes.

In the first half of the 20th century, the word "computer" meant a person who did heavy-duty computation. During the Second World War and the years following, this included doing the computation for missile development. When the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created, computers were in great demand there.

And at JPL, something special happened.

Many of the early computers hired there were women.They were working closely with the engineers, who were all men; women were simply not hired as engineers, no matter what their qualifications. The woman who became head of the computer department decided she would only hire women.

This was not an era of gender equality. Women expected, and were expected, to marry and become mothers. There was no maternity leave, so a married working woman who became pregnant had no alternative but to quit.

But the women working at JPL became a bonded group, as much a family as a group of coworkers. And over the years, they worked to professionalize themselves, and to professionalize their image in the minds of their male coworkers. As the first machine computers were developed and brought in, it was the women computers who learned to use and program them. Both before and after the arrival of the machines, it was the women writing the programs that made both missiles and rockets fly.

This book follows the lives, professional and personal, of the women who first were JPL's computers, and later became the programmers of computers, and finally were recognized as engineers in their own right. They were a major component of the growth of NASA, and the development of the space program. We get to see the tensions between their personal lives and their professional lives, as well as the role they played in pushing the robot-based exploration of the solar system--missions to Venus, Mars, and beyond. It's a complex and stirring tale, and an important piece of both social and scientific history. The early parts especially, for younger readers (and by that I mean readers in their thirties, not kids) is likely to read like an account of an alien, or at the very least foreign, society.

So much progress has happened in my lifetime. I'd hate to see us go backward.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

I read this book because I was really impressed by the movie "Hidden Figures" and wanted to learn more details about the women computers who performed complex mathematical calculations, initially by hand, for the US rocket and space programs.
I found this book difficult to read and at times boring :
- details about particular rocket and space programs are difficult to understand due to a lack of accompanying explanatory sketches, such as trajectories, etc.
- chapters are lengthy and meander back and forth between the personal history and lives of the women computers and mission details which at times makes reading tedious/boring
- the reader should be aware this is only about the women computers who worked at JPL; it does not cover those who worked at Langley
Research Center which the movie dealt with
The book does leave the reader with a general impression of how special these women were and what extraordinary skills they had, how they were often treated as less important than their male counterpart engineers. However, it is difficult to follow the lives of these individual women computers because the book jumps back and forth between them and between describing individual rocket and space programs

I've worked at a flight school, grabbed one of the first copies of Astronaut's Wives and watched the series, and even married a corporate pilot....to there IS something about flight and the heavens that i find intriguing. That's why when i saw THIS book and knew i had to have it....so i thank the author for the chance to read it!

Simply put, it's amazing.
Extremely well -researched, Holt takes the topic of rocket science and breaks it down while involving the lives of the initial 'computers'. The who's who of the real brains behind the whole JPL. ( jet propulsion lab ) She takes a piece of history involving the female scientists at NASA and makes them 3-D. Such intricate miles of multiple calculations and equations solved using only slide rules and their own brains.
Human 'calculators 'that worked with male engineers to create what we all now take for granted. Thing i appreciated most was that the reader doesn't need to have a scientifically geared mind to thoroughly enjoy this book.

Nathalia Holt nailed it -- she effectively blends the personal stories of JPL's "Rocket Girls" with the science and technical details of their professional lives as human computers. And you can follow the evolution of space exploration with such familiar spacecraft as the Vikings, the Voyagers, Cassini and others. It was inspiring to learn what these women accomplished with their mathematical expertise and such "primitive" tools as pencil, paper and those bulky (but pretty awesome) Friden calculators. It's good for us to be reminded that the space program was developed and achieved high levels of success *before* the digital computing age. I felt like I got to know the women personally and to admire them professionally. By all accounts they had fulfilling and long-lasting careers that started in a time when women were expected to quit their jobs if not after marriage then definitely when they got pregnant. The Rocket Girls and Nathalia Holt are my new heroes.

That said, I agree with some reviewers who said that Holt's writing could have used a wee bit of polishing -- sentences starting with "while" and "although" were slightly too abundant and could easily have been restructured. But that is an editorial technicality that didn't disrupt the content or flow of the story. This is a stellar book that will not easily collect dust on my shelf -- I know I will read it again and again.

Ms. Holt has written a fascinating book about the amazing women who worked on the rocket systems in the early days of that industry. There are a few inaccuracies, however, when she discusses computers and programming languages. For example, on pages 175-176 she states "Helen's FORTRAN source code had to be compiled so that the computer could recognize it in its own language, the binary codes of zeroes and ones." It wasn't just the FORTRAN source code that had to be converted to zeroes and ones; assembler source code also had to be converted, as did octal or hexadecimal code, which was used prior to compilers like FORTRAN. "She had to run all the cards through a special machine called a compiler." No, a compiler wasn't a "special machine," it was a program. And Grace Hopper's COBOL compiler was not "the beginning of computer languages." Assemblers were really the beginning of computer languages. And while Lois Haibt was one of the people who worked on developing the FORTRAN compiler, credit for that product really belongs to the late John Backus of IBM. In her zeal to celebrate women in computers, the author ignored a true pioneer who happened to be male.

It's a good book, but the author should have gone just a bit deeper to get these things right.

Great book, but has many errors it technical details.

Very informative on JPL's use of different types of computing equipment over its history.

Two examples of technical errors are that it says that the letter A on an IBM punchcard is a "7 punch", wrong a "7 punch" is the digit 7 and the correct punch for the letter A is the two "12-1 punches"; and that on reentry "flammable gasses in the upper atmosphere ignite", wrong the apparent flames around a reentering object are a plasma created solely by frictional heating between the object and the air, nothing is burning! There are many other errors of this sort sprinkled through the book. It really needed a good technical editor!

Having grown up during the "Space Race" I found the book a fascinating insight into the behind the scenes development of JPL and eventually NASA. Who new? I had always thought, when I thought about it at all which wasn't often, about the math that went into the development of our space program. I thought "computers" were computers, not women with a high aptitude in calculus (my nemesis in high school) wielding slide rules and mechanical gear driven calculators. My only quibble with the book is with the author's writing style which is often with clipped short sentences. Her language just doesn't flow making the reading a bit tedious at times, but regardless, this is an excellent book that also reveals things about the treatment of women in the 1950's - 1960's that most men never knew or understood.

I really wish that I had learned about these amazing women that contributed so much to science. When I was a young girl in the 60s I remember wanting to be an astronaut. I was told that would never happen. I would have been so thrilled to have know what was going on behind the scenes of NASA with the calculations made by such a brilliant group of women. Yes, it sometimes reads a little fluffy in parts and it also has some issues with chronology. But, it gave the women a voice in that period of time so the writing style took you back and made the women feel intimate. Some reviewers wanted more technical information. I don't think that would have made a book with broad appeal. This book wet my appetite to learn more about this subject. I actually really don't like math, but felt very interested to learn about these complex calculations. To the old engineer that told me I couldn't be an astronaut, ha to you! There were a lot more women up in the stars and doing your job than you ever knew.
Read the book. Should be a freshman read at college!

It is a good read, but I caught a number of factual errors. It makes me wonder about the rest of the facts presented.

Examples of errors:
During a discussion of Apollo 6, mentions that (2) second stage engines didn't fire. All engines fired, but one had a problem and when Mission Control went to shut it down, there was a wiring issue that caused an adjacent engine to be shut down.

She discusses hypergolic propellants and mentions that they fill the tanks of the Apollo Launch Vehicle. Hypergolics we used in the command, service and lunar modules (all three are considered the spacecraft). Stages I, II and the S-IVB used Oxygen along with Kerosene (stage 1) and Hydrogen (stages II and the S-IVB).

She mentions that London was brought to it's knees by the German V-2 rocket. Few V-2s actually hit the city; with standard aerial bombardment causing the large majority of the damage.

There is a discussion that North American Rockwell was awarded Shuttle contract due to Nixon political considerations before 1972 elections, but then goes on to say that “it probably didn’t hurt that Rockwell was the lowest bidder”.

As I said, an interesting read, but don't take it for Gospel.