Rise of the Rocket Girls

by Nathalia Holt

  However, Marie missed the girls, and so at lunchtime she gravitated back toward her friends. At the outdoor tables, the computers’ and engineers’ conversations turned theoretical. They discussed satellites, space stations, and sending men into space. But now that Juno was shut down, they wondered if they would ever have a chance to launch a satellite.

  Marie was testing liquid propellants that could be worn in tanks on a soldier’s back. The idea was that the liquid might give bullets more zip than standard gunpowder could. It was a dangerous project, and Marie worried about designing explosive chemicals for a man to wear on his back. She was experimenting with nitric acid, which packed an explosive punch but was also highly corrosive. One day, while pouring the colorless liquid into a beaker, she suddenly felt a searing pain, as though the skin of her arm were ripping off. She looked down to see angry red streaks. She washed her arm immediately, crying not only from the pain but also from the knowledge that the scars would stay with her forever. She couldn’t believe how foolish she’d been.

  The accident unearthed new emotions. For the first time, Marie considered leaving science. While most of the time she loved working in the lab, she wanted a family. In the evenings, she and her husband giggled over names and dreamed of what a baby would bring into their lives. After years of Marie’s working long hours while Paul fought abroad, he was home at last and they were finally ready. Marie couldn’t wait to be a mother.

  As excited as she was about getting pregnant, she worried about the chemicals she worked with on a daily basis—especially the radioactive ones. Could they harm an unborn child? She and her fellow chemists wore little to no protective gear, and there were few safety protocols to follow. Her accident with nitric acid showed her how dangerous the lab could be. Though it wasn’t easy to leave a job she loved and colleagues who had become like family, Marie, filled with the anxieties of impending motherhood, reluctantly decided to quit.

  Janez was leaving JPL as well. Like Marie, she was pregnant. In a time before maternity leave, she had few options. She had to quit. However, two kids later, she would find work in private industry as a chemical engineer at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, in Los Angeles. JPL had given her the ideal experience needed to get a job in the aeronautical engineering section. As happy as she was to join the company, she’d miss her friends at JPL. She’d never belong to such a tight-knit group of female colleagues again.

  Juno was also slipping away, but Pickering at JPL and Wernher von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, in Alabama, wouldn’t allow their plans for a satellite to be stalled. They believed that eventually the government would give them the thumbs-up to make a satellite. When that happened, they should at least have all the parts they needed. They kept everything in storage and continued to plead their case.

  The stakes were about to get higher. Now, while socializing in the opulent USSR embassy on this October night in 1957, Pickering noticed Walter Sullivan, a science reporter for the New York Times, making his way through the crowd. Sullivan approached him and asked, “What have they said about the satellite? Radio Moscow says they have got a satellite in orbit.” It was the first Pickering had heard about the satellite the world would soon know as Sputnik. He was stunned. As the news spread across the cocktail party, the vodka began flowing. Everyone toasted the success of the Soviet satellite. Overhead it was sending out a series of beeps, a song of triumph, as it passed over their heads every ninety-six minutes.

  That night in Alabama, in response to Sputnik, von Braun pleaded with the new secretary of defense, Neil McElroy, fresh from his first tour of the Redstone Arsenal that afternoon. “Vanguard will never make it. We have the hardware on the shelf. For God’s sake, turn us loose and let us do something,” he implored him. “We can put up a satellite in sixty days, Mr. McElroy! Just give us a green light and sixty days.” Von Braun’s commander, Major General John Medaris, corrected him: “No, Wernher. Ninety days,” he said. But McElroy wasn’t moved. Instead he returned to Washington without committing himself.

  Helen’s heart dropped when she heard about Sputnik on the radio. It was maddening to think how easily they could have been first. Her thoughts turned toward the unsanctioned, top-secret satellite they had designed at JPL. It was currently hidden in a cabinet. An elongated cylinder, it was very different from the shiny, sphere-shaped Sputnik that was flying overhead. She was sure it would come out of hiding now.

  To her surprise, the lab’s satellite stayed where it was. Despite the anxiety Sputnik was inducing across the country, Eisenhower would not give JPL and von Braun the go-ahead. Although recognizing that the army could have launched a satellite the year before, the administration stubbornly clung to the idea that it should be kept separate from the army. Officials knew that if they were to launch satellites into space, they had to show that it was in the spirit of exploration, not military might. If they ignored this nuance, the politicians worried, the space race might turn into the space war.

  They would wait for Project Vanguard. In Pasadena, the computers were beside themselves. Barbara Lewis seethed with irritation while everyone complained about the president. Chief among their frustrations was the fact that Sputnik wasn’t scientifically savvy. The Soviet satellite did little besides measure temperature and atmospheric pressure. JPL could have easily launched something similar the previous year. Now it wasn’t enough to match the Russians; the Americans had to show they were superior. With this in mind, JPL began calculations for Project Red Socks.

  When Helen first learned of the plan, she thought it seemed utterly preposterous. The idea was to launch a rocket to the moon. They would beef up Juno, adding even more Baby Sergeants, and use the Microlock system to track the rocket. Barbara laughed when she saw the list of objectives: “1. Get pictures, 2. Refine space guidance techniques, 3. Impress the world.” Fervently, the computers began calculating trajectories to the moon, but it felt more like a game of make-believe than actual work. It was hard to believe that after rejecting their sensible satellite proposal, the government would approve this fantastic journey. Sure enough, Project Red Socks didn’t make it far. The Department of Defense, awash in fantastic proposals following Sputnik, couldn’t take the nine rocket flights to the moon seriously. However, the computers didn’t toss out their calculations. Instead they filed them away, hopeful they might prove useful in the future.

  While the computers were plotting fanciful journeys, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2. The second Soviet satellite was more technologically advanced, equipped with Geiger counters and spectrometers to measure solar radiation and cosmic rays. More impressive, it carried the first living creature to be launched into space: an eleven-pound dog named Laika. Huddled together, several JPL engineers and computers stood outside the lab one evening and looked up into the night. The satellite looked like a floating star, zooming across the sky. They felt pangs of envy but at the same time marveled that the feat of engineering over their heads was real. Their calculations had taught them that it was an accomplishment not to be taken lightly, especially with an animal traveling inside—even though little Laika had passed away only hours after the launch. While the Soviets boasted of the health of their “four-legged astronaut,” the dead dog, who had sadly succumbed to overheating, passed over their heads every 103 minutes.

  In the five months since Eisenhower announced the United States would be launching a satellite soon, the Soviets had launched two. Americans couldn’t be sure the Sputniks weren’t some sort of weapon or spy machine. With their mysterious beeping, detectable by amateur ham-radio enthusiasts, and relentless passage across the sky, they brought feelings of uncertainty and fear. The American dominance established by atomic and hydrogen bombs had been supplanted by two swift metal spheres in space. Eisenhower’s calm demeanor in the wake of defeat sparked anger. John F. Kennedy, then the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, accused the president of “complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and was
teful rivalries and jealousies.” In the eyes of his critics, Ike had unforgivably let the Soviets win.

  One month after Sputnik 2 blasted off, it was Project Vanguard’s turn to launch a satellite. The television cameras were ready, broadcasting the event live to a nation eager to regain its reputation in science and engineering. “There’s ignition. We can see the flames. Vanguard’s engine is lit and it’s burning,” said Jay Barbree, reporting live on the radio on December 6, 1957. “But wait, wait a moment, there’s, there’s no liftoff! It appears to be crumbling in its own fire. It’s burning on the pad! Vanguard has crumbled into flames. It failed, ladies and gentlemen. Vanguard has failed.”

  Those watching at home could clearly see that the rocket had lifted a few feet into the air before violently tipping over and crashing back down. Before it could even hit the ground it was engulfed in massive orange and red flames. The fuel tanks ruptured, causing explosions that rocked the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. The clouds of fire and smoke grew bigger, overtaking the platform. Although likely caused by a fuel leak, the rocket’s dramatic downfall would never be completely explained.

  The headlines screamed FLOPSNIK, OOPSNIK, KAPUTNIK, and STAYPUTNIK. The Soviets tendered their sympathies and, with a supercilious air, offered their technical assistance. The New York Stock Exchange shut down. Luckily, JPL was already hard at work.

  A month earlier, amid intense pressure, the Eisenhower administration finally gave Pickering and von Braun the green light. Politicians were swiftly changing their minds about the laboratory, with Donald Quarles, deputy secretary of defense, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Preparedness Subcommittee in November that, in retrospect, the army should have been given the task of developing the satellite from the beginning. Rumblings of the need for a separate space agency began to echo through the halls of Congress.

  As news of the authorization to pursue a satellite reached them, the computers jumped up and down with excitement. They got their notebooks out of locked drawers as the engineers opened up the cabinet concealing the forbidden shell they had secretly worked on. Everyone knew long days were ahead if they were going to get this satellite launched quickly. Luckily, thanks to Jupiter-C, much of the work was already done.

  They called it Project Deal. The strategy was essentially unchanged from the rejected Project Orbiter, with modifications learned from Jupiter-C. The rocket would launch the satellite using a four-stage design. JPL’s satellite skin would house instrumentation developed by astrophysicist James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. Hedging his bets, Van Allen had cleverly made his equipment adaptable to either Project Vanguard or Orbiter.

  The women spent their days and nights checking and rechecking trajectories while calculating the effects of temperature, speed, and pressure on the instrumentation. They worked with nervous energy, equal parts excited and anxious. They knew the stakes were high. There was no room for failure. Their home lives had to take a backseat as the work intensified and the January 29 launch date approached.

  One day, Barbara came to work early, settling in at her desk. Ginny Anderson, formerly Swanson, looked her up and down, smiling. “What is it?” Barbara asked, running her fingers through her hair. She’d gotten ready in a rush, in the dark of the early-morning hours. Lately, she barely thought about what she wore day to day, instead just grabbing from the closet whatever clean dress was closest. “Look at your shoes,” Ginny said. Barbara looked down. She was wearing one blue shoe and one black one. They both burst out laughing. Barbara spent the rest of the day pointing out her mismatched shoes to anyone who needed a laugh.

  The big day finally arrived. But despite a clear January sky, the launch date was scrubbed, since winds were whipping around Cape Canaveral at 180 miles per hour. The next night the mission was canceled just an hour before the 10:30 p.m. launch time; the winds still hadn’t died down. The engineers and computers were exasperated by the delay. After more than a year, waiting two more days seemed torturous.

  In the midst of all this anticipation, Sue Finley entered the gates of JPL for the first time, on January 30. She didn’t know what to make of the excitement in the lab. Everyone was running around busily. No one had time to talk to her, much less get her training started. Sue didn’t care. She was still reeling from her loss. It had been only a year since she had lost her newborn son, and the experience had changed her in essential ways. She’d gone from wanting a career to desiring nothing but a baby. The idea of becoming a mother constantly occupied her thoughts. She wasn’t sure she’d last long at this job at JPL; it was simply something to take her mind off her pain while she waited to get pregnant again. As she watched the computers whirl around the room, the sound of Friden calculators clicking furiously, she wondered if she could ever care about a job as much as they did.

  On Friday, January 31, 1958, the wind died down. Barbara and Margie Behrens knew they were in for a long night. The night Sputnik had flown overhead, von Braun and Medaris had begged the secretary of defense to give them the OK to launch their own satellite, saying that it would take only ninety days. They were coming in right under the wire. It was just eighty-four days since Washington had authorized the mission. Tonight, full of anticipation, Barbara and Margie entered the “dark room,” the mission control center built into the Pasadena foothills. Their eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, which ensured that, as in a car at night, the backlit instrumentation could be seen clearly.

  Their nerves remained on edge as they waited for the launch to begin. Margie played chess with Sol Galom, one of the engineers. He was a serious chess player, even penning a chess column for the Los Angeles Times. The two played calmly, as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Barbara, meanwhile, was getting things ready. She set up her notebooks at the light table and lined up mechanical pencils beside them. She took out graph paper, useful for measuring in both millimeters and inches, and chatted with another computer, Nancy Evans. They spoke casually but kept their eyes on the clock. As Barbara waited, she thought about Harry. She had seen him only a few hours earlier, when he told her how much he missed her and stole a kiss before leaving her to her work. They were supposed to have a date but, of course, Barbara was needed at JPL. Harry was beginning to realize what married life with her might be like.

  No cameras were allowed near Launchpad 26A. The media wasn’t informed that a second U.S. satellite attempt was scheduled, in case something went terribly wrong again. At 10:48 p.m. at Cape Canaveral, ignition started and the rocket fired. Once it was out of sight, Richard Hirsch, a member of the National Security Council, formally named the satellite Explorer. At the Pentagon, von Braun turned to Pickering and said, “It’s yours now.” The rocket was out of their hands, and they could only hope it would be a success. Success or failure would be ascertained by those at JPL. Back in Pasadena, data began to come across the Teletype. Barbara started her calculations, her pencil moving furiously across the paper.

  Sitting at the light table, she could sense three very intimidating men towering over her: Richard Feynman, the famed physicist, now at Caltech; Feynman’s former PhD student Al Hibbs, now director of Space Science at JPL; and Lee DuBridge, the president of Caltech. Feynman stood behind her and peeked over her shoulder as she calculated the satellite’s velocity leaving Earth. He was unnaturally calm, a departure from his usually jumpy behavior.

  The calculations thus far looked promising. The satellite was moving with the right speed to overcome Earth’s gravitational pull and at the right angle to enter orbit. Yet they all knew that the real test would come after Explorer had made its first orbit around Earth and they could detect the signal again in California. If it wasn’t moving with enough speed or in the right direction, the whole thing would come crashing back to Earth. They expected the wait to be about ninety minutes. On both coasts and in Alabama, men and women were quiet as they waited in the shadowy light of control rooms.

  Notably absent from the JPL control room was their director, Bill Pickering. He, von
Braun, and Van Allen had all been shuttled off to Washington, much against their wishes. The government wanted to avoid the media disaster of Vanguard, but if the mission should prove to be a success, they wanted to have the three principal players available right away for a press conference. The men waited at the Pentagon for word, Pickering with an open phone line to JPL.

  As they waited, General Medaris, the commander at Cape Canaveral, sent a message to JPL:

  GEN MEDARIS SAID HAVE A CUP OF COFFEE—SMOKE A CIGARETT SWEAT IT OUT WITH US

  The group took his advice literally, and the mission control room started to fill up with smoke as they waited with nervous energy. Barbara was not a smoker and was too nervous to drink any coffee. In response, JPL sent back a joking message characteristic of their laid-back California attitude:

  WE ARE BEING NONCHALANT AND LIGHTING UP A MARAJUANA HA [sic]

  The mood was anything but nonchalant. By 12:41 a.m. on the East Coast, Pickering had given up hope. They should have heard from the satellite by now. Obviously, the mission had failed. The trio at the Pentagon were despondent. Their wild claims of being able to put up a satellite in ninety days now seemed like a lot of nonsense.

  Barbara, however, was holding on. She was tracking the satellite’s movement by its shift in Doppler frequency. As Explorer flew through the air and into space, it sent electromagnetic waves back to a receiver on Earth. Similar to the way an ambulance’s siren starts with a droning whine as it approaches an observer, reaches its full intensity as it loudly passes, and then changes in tone as it drives on by, the waves coming from the satellite changed in frequency depending on its relative velocity from Earth—diminishing the farther away it flew. By plotting the frequency of the waves against time, Barbara could chart the satellite’s curving path into the heavens.