Rocket Girl

by George D. Morgan

  After my mother's death in 2004, as I began to sift through our family history and discover my mother's accomplishments in rocketry and aerospace, I couldn't help but wonder why she would not embrace her sons even when they were participating in an activity in which she had a personal interest.

  It's a question I will probably never have a good answer for.

  I've always considered open caskets to be morbid. Perhaps it's because I've seen too many of them. When I was a boy, it seemed as if every few months the Morgans or the Shermans or someone close to our family was having a funeral. No weddings—just funerals (to put this experience in perspective, the first wedding I ever attended was my own). So, by the time 2004 came along, I was at a place in my life where I had seen enough open caskets for one lifetime and decided to avoid them by avoiding funerals.

  Yet, when the day of my mother's funeral arrived, something had changed. As I approached her open casket, I was glad to be able to see her one last time. I hadn't been the best son in the world—hadn't visited my parents as often as I could have, though I lived only an hour away. And so on that day, I stood by her side and lingered for a while. Just me and my mom. Then I said good-bye.

  My den is filled with boxes stuffed with reference books, history books, notebooks, photographs, and video cards filled with talking heads. I stare at them, realizing they constitute almost ten years of my life. All those interviews, all that research, and I still don't know very much about my mother. She was a genius at everything she did, but at nothing else was she more skilled than her prankish, stealthy campaign of personal self-erasure. Her efforts at living a full life on the one hand, while plotting the expunction of her name from history on the other, required a level of mental perspicacity far beyond the average person. Fortunately, her attempt to make herself well regarded in life but anonymous in death ultimately failed; she touched too many people.

  Something I've learned from this experience is that history is just like the future: uncertain. I can't help but wonder how many other Mary Sherman Morgans have lived throughout human history—people with accomplishments significant enough to be historic, but whose exploits historians failed to properly record. How many battles have been won because a soldier did something heroic, but was forgotten? How many inventions have been attributed to the wrong person? How many nameless shoulders did others stand on to grab glory? For the rest of my life, I will look askance at everything I've learned in every history class I've taken. It's all suspect now. I have become better aware; the imperfections and flaws of recorded human history are laid bare, and they are legion.

  I start gathering the boxes and carrying them out to my car. They'll go into our storage unit just outside of town. Perhaps I'll need them again someday. Or maybe some future historian will need them. One thing's for certain: We're going to protect the records this time.

  Two slide rules. Some paper and paper clips. A pair of scissors. A nail file. A couple of chemistry reference books. All of Mary's accumulated personal property did not fill even a single cardboard box. She took a second look through each drawer and checked for the tenth time that she had the congratulatory letter from Wernher von Braun. Once she gave up her security badge, not even the power of god would get her back inside this building. When Mary was sure she had everything packed, she took one last nostalgic look around her workspace. Bill and Toru's desks were empty, as they were conducting engine tests on the Hill. There were so many new hires, so many new engineers she had not yet met. She looked around for a friendly face—someone, anyone who would just say, “Good work. We'll miss you.” But there was no one. They were all busy with new contracts, new propellants, new engine designs, new injector problems, new instability dilemmas. She longed to be a part of it all.

  Mary picked up her box and started the long walk toward the exit.

  Joe Friedman, recently promoted to senior engineer, was standing at his desk, talking with two other engineers. As Mary approached, Joe stopped mid-conversation, faced her direction, and began clapping. His two companions did the same. Other engineers in a fifty-foot radius stood up at their desks and joined in. As Mary continued her final walk, the circle of standing, applauding engineers grew larger and larger as it sought to fill every square inch of the hangar-size building. Many of the engineers climbed up onto their desks so they could see and be heard. Soon all the engineers were on their feet, clapping and cheering and whistling and roaring.

  Mary was especially proud of one particular change that had occurred since her first day of work: at least a dozen of those applauding engineers were women.

  She stopped at the steel exit door, turned, and gave a final wave, utterly overcome with emotion. She pushed through the door into the lobby. Tom Meyers was waiting for her. As the door closed behind her, the roar of the crowd faded out.

  “Sounds like you were having a party in there.”

  “Against company rules, I assume.”

  “I wanted to be the last person you saw before you left. Congratulations. You helped make our country, and our company, proud. Everyone will miss you.”

  Mary noticed that both of the receptionists behind the front desk were crying.

  “Thank you. I'll miss my coworkers, but I'll especially the work.” Mary removed her security badge, but Tom refused to take it.

  “You're going to need that for a few more hours.” He handed her an SSFL pass. “Technically you still belong to me until five o'clock. I want you to head up to the Hill.”

  Tom placed a thin manila folder into her box.

  “They're doing a test on an upgraded A-7. I want you to do the specific impulse data reduction. You can turn your badge in when you're done.”

  “I was going to take the bus home. Richard has the car. I have no way of getting up there.”

  Tom turned toward the large window. For the first time, Mary could see her husband—his red crew cut shining bright in the California sun—standing in the parking lot beside their forest-green VW with the small rear window. The engine compartment was open, and he was waxing poetic about some gear or strut or piston with another engineer.1

  “He loves that air-cooled engine.”

  “We've given Richard a pass. He's going to take you up to the Hill.”

  Mary nodded. “Well, good-bye.”

  One of the receptionists rushed to open the door for her, and Mary Sherman Morgan left the Canoga Park office of North American Aviation (recently renamed Rocketdyne), for the last time.

  When Richard and Mary entered the blockhouse, it was festooned with garland and crepe paper. The decorations were cheap, simple, slapped together. Whoever had purchased them had probably spent no more than two dollars on everything. Engineers had a well-deserved reputation for parsimony, and Mary was one of them. In the corner was a card table, and on it was a chocolate cake she was sure had been baked by one of the engineers’ wives. It had that kind of look to it. A hand-painted cardboard poster on one wall had a felt pen scrawl: “GOOD-BYE, ROCKET GIRL.” There was a photo glued to it of an A-7 engine test-firing, its fiery exhaust showing the now-familiar color scheme of the LOX/hydyne exhaust.

  A dozen engineers and technicians were present, and they gave her a short ovational welcome. Very short—as in about two seconds.

  Then everyone got back to business, which was fine with Mary. The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory was about to have a test-firing: frivolity, nostalgia, and going-away parties were not on the program. Besides, who wouldn't rather see a large liquid-rocket test-firing over chocolate cake any day?

  Bill Webber appeared around a corner and shook her hand.

  “It's not too late to change your mind.”

  She gently patted her baby bump. “One kid at home and another on the way. I have other work to do now.”

  Bill nodded, then glanced toward one of the blockhouse windows. The test stand could be seen, quiet and still, several hundred yards away.

  “Stick around—it's gonna be one helluva blast.”

  Mar
y held up the file. “I'm doing the isp data reduction.”

  “Working on your last day; that is so like you.” Bill pointed to one of the empty desks. “You can use that one.” Bill smiled and returned to his station.

  The California condor had been lucky, having managed to scavenge a hearty meal off an early-morning roadkill on Santa Susana Pass Road. A speeding motorist had struck the coyote hard as it rounded a sharp turn, and now nature, abhorrent of waste, had turned the carcass into breakfast for other links in life's food chain.

  The condor snipped off one last piece of red meat, hopped into the air, then flapped its nine-foot wingspan, ascending swiftly into the Southern California sky. With the summer sun moving steadily upward, the air temperature was rising, as were the currents. The condor happily rode those updrafts, giving its tired wings a needed respite. Still, it would be nice to just sit for a while—to rest from a journey that had taken it from the misty mountains of Big Sur to the rocky scrub of the Simi Valley hills. Its keen eyes surveyed the landscape below, but the vulture's options were few, as the hills in this part of its flight zone were covered with hot, dry grass and very few trees.

  Over a low rise, the condor glided, and in a moment, it spotted a compound of dusty gray buildings. She circled the compound once, but could see no shade at all. It was getting hotter now, and the rising thermals were tickling the rows of long feathers that formed the back of each wing. With her featherless neck exposed to the sun, the condor was in danger of dehydration if she failed to find water, or at least some shade. She was about to yaw left in preparation for a turn southward when she spotted it—a large bell.

  At least two or three times a year, the condor would make her way up the cool, breezy coastline to the Santa Barbara Mission. There was a favorite place she enjoyed—and always tried to return to—a high perch above the squealing children, shouting adults, and moving cars. There, a small archway provided a buffer from the ocean breezes, and hanging from that archway was a copper bell providing both shade and shelter. Now, as she maneuvered out of the updraft and drifted downward, one thing became clear—this new bell was much larger than the one at the mission.

  She landed softly in the sun, then took a half dozen hopping steps to reach the quiet shade of the bell. She marveled at how much cooler it was, and made a mental note of all the nooks and crannies above her she could hide in if predators approached.

  The condor folded her wings together, closed her eyes, and rested from its long journey.

  Mary was searching the office area for a Marchand or Friden calculator, but could find none.

  “Richard, could you ask the technicians where the Fridens are?”

  A few moments later, Richard returned with unexpected news.

  “They sent them to storage. They're being replaced by some machine made by IBM called a computer. It's being installed right now over at the Canoga Park building.”

  “Then what am I supposed to use for the data analysis?”

  Richard handed her a slide rule. “I guess you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” Then he returned to the control room to assist with the firing.

  Mary opened the file Tom had given her and read over the test parameters. Or at least she tried to. Normally Mary would have no trouble focusing on her work, but life was changing, and major disruptions (like retirement and pregnancy) have a way of throwing people off their rhythm. She thought about her son and baby-to-be, and all the attendant responsibilities of being a 1950s middle-American, white-bread mother. She had enjoyed her work in the aerospace business, but it was time to move on. Tomorrow she would be a full-time homemaker and mother.

  Mary caught herself daydreaming, a highly unusual activity for her. She began performing a calculation with the slide rule, but only a few seconds later, there was another disruption, this one coming from the next room. The engineers and technicians had abandoned their usual businesslike demeanor and were running around, talking and shouting. Suddenly one of the technicians ran in.

  “Hey, Mary! You're not gonna believe it. There's a large bird sitting underneath the rocket nozzle. Kanarek says it's a condor.”

  Mary stood up from her desk, grabbed a pair of binoculars from a drawer, and took a look through one of the small, four-inch-thick blockhouse windows.

  “It just flew right in and landed.”

  Mary focused the lenses as she searched the firing area. There was the 1,000-ton concrete and steel test stand, below which was the 84,000-pound-thrust A-7 engine. She could even make out the rocket engine's serial number, NAA-110-43, affixed to the turbopump casing. Government specs still required all engines to be test-fired three times before being shipped out to the customer. Today would be the third and final such test of engine NAA-110-43. They were behind schedule, and the customer was unhappy.

  “I don't see it,” she said.

  “Right below the nozzle. It's in the shade—hard to see.”

  “Oh yeah—there it is.” Mary realized Irving was correct; she had seen enough pictures in enough magazines to know.

  “That is definitely a California condor.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Bare neck, bald head, black feathers. And its size.”

  With dispassionate efficiency, the loudspeaker announced the continued countdown: “Two minutes to ignition.”

  Bill Webber entered with another set of binoculars. He took his place at the second window. Both of them could see the condor casually preen itself, not a care in the world.

  “He's going to get a 4,000-degree ass-kick if he doesn't fly his avian butt outta there soon.”

  Mary lowered her lenses and looked at him. “How do you know it's a ‘he’?” She did not wait for a reply. “We need to stop the test.”

  “Hey, you know the rules. These hills are full of wildlife. If we stopped the tests for every rodent, squirrel, mountain lion, and bird, we'd never fire an engine.”

  “Not just any bird—a California condor.”

  “A vulture. A scavenger.”

  “We need to make some noise or something; scare it off.”

  Bill shook his head. “The test stand's too far away. You could go outside and scream all day—it would never hear you.”

  In front of them was an array of hundreds of knobs, switches, buttons, and meters. Mary leaned on the control panel and thought.

  Focus on the problem—how do we scare it off?

  “Noise. We need to make a noise.” Her eyes again passed over the control knobs and meters. One of them was labeled “OXYGEN TANK VENT.”

  “The oxygen tank.”

  “What about it?”

  “The tank is mounted close to where the bird is standing. If we vent the tank, it will make a loud hissing sound. Could scare it off.”

  The loudspeaker continued the count: “One minute, thirty seconds.”

  “Vent the oxygen tank—this late in the count? That's totally contrary to procedure.”

  “Please, Bill.”

  “I ain't takin’ that responsibility. You wanna vent the tank, you'll have to run it by Kanarek.”

  Mary left the control room, ran down the hall, and burst into her supervisor's office.

  “Irving—we need to vent the oxygen tank.”

  Irving looked up from his desk. “What the hell for? We're less than two minutes from test.”

  “That bird—the California condor—it's taking a siesta under the bell nozzle.”

  “I know.” Irving laughed. “He's in for a little surprise.”

  “The sound will scare it away.”

  “You don't know that.”

  “Please.”

  “No way. That's completely out of procedure. You want to vent the tanks, you'll have to take it to Mansfield.”

  Without another word, Mary ran out. She took three running steps to the stairs, and climbed them two steps at a time. The office of Ned Mansfield was right around the corner. He happened to be standing in the doorway, examining some papers on a clipboard.
>
  “Mister Mansfield.” She took several labored breaths—it had been a long time since she had done this much exercise. And, of course, all those Winstons didn't help.

  The loudspeaker interrupted: “One minute to ignition.”

  “Yes, Mary.”

  “We have a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “There's a bird—a condor—sitting under the nozzle. It's right under the engine…”

  “You mean a California condor!?”

  She nodded, still breathing hard.

  “Oh my god—I've never seen one.”

  Ned headed quickly down the stairs, and Mary followed. He continued talking as they walked. “How long has it been there?”

  “Just.”

  They entered the control room. The word had gone out to the technicians and engineers—all of whom now crowded around the three small windows, struggling for a view and fighting over the few available binoculars.

  Ned entered and shouted. “Outta the way!!”

  Like the Red Sea, they parted. Ned grabbed a set of binoculars from the nearest technician and held them up, carefully adjusting the focus knob.

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “She's beautiful.”

  Ned turned to Mary. “How do you know it's a ‘she’?”

  “I—I don't. That's not the point…”

  Throughout the small blockhouse room, Mary noticed the techies and engineers had formed into two groups—those who were concerned for the noble bird's welfare, and those who were joking about having “burnt vulture for lunch.”

  Ned set the binoculars down as the loudspeaker blared, “Thirty seconds to ignition.”

  “You know, I'll bet if we vented the oxygen tank a couple of times, we could scare it off.”

  Normally Mary would take this opportunity to tell Ned that the oxygen tank idea had been hers all along, but today there was no time for posturing. It was at crunch times like this that ego-massaging could be considered an acceptable, if unpleasant, solution.