Rise of the Rocket Girls

by Nathalia Holt

  Dialogue is reported either directly from author interviews or re-created based on interviews and archival material, particularly meeting minutes, lab notebooks, letters, and oral histories.

  Launch Day

  Personal anecdotes come from author interviews. Details on the launch of Explorer 1 can be found in Matthew A. Bille and Erika Lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004).

  Chapter 1: Up, Up, and Away

  All personal anecdotes obtained from census data, personal correspondence, oral histories, author interviews with JPL employees, and archival material, including photographs, meeting minutes, and newsletters.

  Information about the Suicide Squad and the early history of JPL can be found in Frank Malina, “The Rocket Pioneers: Memoirs of the Infant Days of Rocketry at Caltech,” Engineering and Science 31(5) (1968); Malina, “Memoir on the GALCIT Rocket Research Project, 1936–1938,” Smithsonian Annals of Flight 10 (1974); Malina, “The Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Its Origin and First Decade of Work,” Spaceflight 6(5) and 6(6) (1964); oral-history interview of Malina by Mary Terrall, December 14, 1978, Caltech Archives; Chris Gainor, To a Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and Erik M. Conway, “From Rockets to Spacecraft: Making JPL a Place for Planetary Science,” Engineering and Science 70(4) (2007).

  The number of industrial establishments in Pasadena totaled only 159 in 1929 and decreased even further, to 83 in 1933, as reported on the City of Pasadena website (http://ww2.cityofpasadena.net/history/1930-1950.asp, accessed December 2014).

  A history of women in computing, including the women who worked in early astronomy and those who were hired as part of the WPA, can be found in David Alan Grier, When Computers Were Human (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), and Grier, “The Math Tables Project of the Works Project Administration: The Reluctant Start of the Computing Era,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20(3) (1998): 33–50.

  Fritz Zwicky is quoted as saying “You’re a bloody fool,” etc., in an oral-history interview of Malina by Mary Terrall, December 14, 1978, Caltech Archives. It’s important to note that soon afterward, Zwicky supported Malina and his work, eventually becoming a consultant at JPL.

  MIT’s Vannevar Bush is quoted as saying “I don’t understand how a serious scientist or engineer can play around with rockets” in G. Pascal Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1997).

  Further details about the development of jet engines can be found in Sterling Michael Pavelec, The Jet Race and the Second World War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).

  Information about Malina from the Frank Malina Collection, JPL Archives. His FBI files and personal correspondence are available at the Library of Congress.

  Jerome Hunsaker is quoted as saying “Von Kármán can take the Buck Rogers job” in Malina, “Origins and First Decade of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” in Eugene M. Emme, ed., The History of Rocket Technology: Essays on Research, Technology, and Utility (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964).

  Discussion of JATO technology can be found in J. D. Hunley, Preludes to U.S. Space-Launch Vehicle Technology: Goddard Rockets to Minuteman III (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008).

  Details of the Ercoupe flight schedule and results can be found in Malina, “Results of Flight Tests of the Ercoupe Airplane with Auxiliary Jet Propulsion Supplied by Solid Propellant Jet Units: Report,” 1941, JPL Archives History Collection. The documents in this collection include original notebooks that mention Barbara Canright’s contributions as well as the quote from Jack Parsons, “The pilot deserves credit for his willingness to continue flight test as soon as the airplane was repaired.”

  A description of Ercoupe planes being sold at Macy’s department store can be found in Paul Glenshaw, “Buy Your Plane at Penney’s,” Air & Space Smithsonian, November 2013.

  Eleanor Roosevelt said, “We know what we have to face, and we know that we are ready to face it” as part of her weekly radio broadcast on December 7, 1941.

  Description of the Douglas A-20A bomber experiments can be found in J. D. Hunley, The Development of Propulsion Technology for U.S. Space-Launch Vehicles, 1926–1991 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013).

  Details about Melba Nead, Freeman Kincaid, Macie Roberts, and Virginia Prettyman can be found in “Reminiscences of California Institute of Technology Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, GALCIT No. 1, later JPL,” memo from Nead to Kyky Chapman, JPL Archives History Collection.

  Walt Powell’s attack on Malina with a hatchet is described in Powell’s comments on Malina’s memoir, Walter Powell Collection, JPL Archives. Malina’s memoir also includes a discussion of how von Kármán chose a successor for JPL and the role of Clark Millikan.

  A biography of Jack Parsons, which relates how Parsons got the idea for an asphalt-based propellant by watching a construction crew mix molten asphalt, can be found in John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2005).

  A technical description of Jack Parsons’s asphalt-based propellant, also known as GALCIT 61-C, including the calculations used to test it, can be found in “The Preparation and Some Properties of an Asphalt Base Solid Propellant GALCIT 61-C,” GALCIT Report No. 22, JPL Archives History Collection.

  Macie’s promotion to “acting head of the computing group” was announced in a memo to the lab on September 3, 1946.

  A description of the Rose Parade in the 1940s and of the mandatory tryouts required by women’s physical education classes at Pasadena Junior College can be found in Kim Kowsky, “Parade Passed Her By: In 1942, a Rose Princess Could Only Wave Goodbye to Her Dreams,” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1992.

  Chapter 2: Headed West

  All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.

  China’s role in World War II is discussed in Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

  More information about the Flying Tigers can be found in Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941–1942 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

  The boom in jobs in the aerospace industry in the 1940s is reported in Robert A. Kleinhenz et al., “The Aerospace Industry in Southern California,” prepared for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, 2012.

  The U.S. aircraft industry rose from the forty-first-largest industry in the world to the first between 1939 and 1945, as reported in Roger E. Bilstein, The American Aerospace Industry (New York: Twayne, 1996).

  Chapter 3: Rockets Rising

  All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.

  Barbara signed the hundredth Corporal in 1955. The rocket launched from White Sands on April 28, 1955. William Pickering described the event in a JPL Stories presentation in the JPL library, January 2001.

  Descriptions of the Corporal, WAC Corporal, and the Bumper WAC can be found in Frank H. Winter, Rockets into Space (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Rockets and Missiles: The Life Story of a Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Mike Gruntman, Blazing the Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2004).

  A history of the name of the WAC Corporal, including the alternate definitions “Without Altitude Control” and “Women’s Army Corps,” can be found in Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan, eds., New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the Twentieth Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).

  The description of the White Sands Proving Ground obtained from personal interviews and correspondence. A description of the antics that occurred there can be found in M. G. Lord, Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science (New York: Walker, 2006). The physical beauty of the site and its use in
the Trinity test are noted in Rose Houk and Michael Collier, White Sands National Monument (Tucson, AZ: Western National Parks Association, 1994).

  The January 1949 snowstorm is described in Stephen B. Johnson, “In 1949, the Snowman Socked Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2013.

  Results of Corporal and Bumper WAC tests are documented in the official government report, James W. Bragg et al., “Development of the Corporal: The Embryo of the Army Missile Program,” Army Missile Command (Huntsville, AL: April 1961).

  The V-2 rocket’s flight over El Paso and its crash in Juarez were described in “V-2 Rocket, Off Course, Falls Near Juarez,” El Paso Times, May 30, 1947.

  A history of what would later be Cape Canaveral, and its origins in Cocoa Beach, can be found in Tony Long, “July 24, 1950: America Gets a Spaceport,” Wired, July 24, 2009.

  Information about Coralie Pearson’s role in helping the Bumper WAC to launch was obtained through author interviews. A description of the launch on February 24, 1949, and technical considerations of the Bumper WAC can be found in J. D. Hunley, Preludes to U.S. Space-Launch Vehicle Technology: Goddard Rockets to Minuteman III (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008).

  The USSR’s first atomic bomb, code-named First Lightning, is described in Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

  Hsue-Shen Tsien is the name used in the United States, though Tsien was known as Qian Xuesen in China. His history is documented in Iris Chang, Thread of the Silkworm (New York: Basic Books, 1995). His FBI record was obtained using the Freedom of Information Act. Tsien was still considered a spy by the U.S. government in 1999, as reported in the U.S. House of Representatives Report 105–851, “Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, Submitted by Mr. [Christopher] Cox of California, [Committee] Chairman,” January 3, 1999, 105th Congress, second session.

  Frank Malina’s troubles with the FBI and self-imposed exile to France are documented in his FBI files.

  Description of the Corporal convoy, including its sixteen-mile length, can be found in Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

  Chapter 4: Miss Guided Missile

  All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.

  JPL’s budget doubled to $11 million and the lab’s personnel subsequently grew, as described in Clayton R. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982).

  Multiple advertisements for computers were made by JPL in the 1950s and posted in area universities, as documented in archives of the lab’s newsletter Lab-Oratory.

  The changing African-American population in Los Angeles is described in Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Lippard, eds., Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014).

  Tract housing replacing orange groves in Southern California is documented in “Tract Housing in California, 1945–1973: A Context for National Register Evaluation,” prepared by the California Department of Transportation (Sacramento, CA: 2011).

  The hiring of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company as a contractor for production of the Corporal, and JPL’s growing frustration over its lack of consistency, are described in Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

  The history of Harry James Pool and his burning star can be found in P. Thomas Carroll, “Historical Origins of the Sergeant Missile Powerplant,” in Kristan R. Lattu, ed., History of Rocketry and Astronautics: Proceedings of the Seventh and Eighth History Symposia of the International Academy of Astronautics, 1973–1974 (San Diego: Univelt, 1989).

  The twelve successive Sergeant rocket explosions and the intrinsic problems with the burning star were described in Roger D. Launius and Dennis R. Jenkins, eds., To Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002).

  More information about the Fibonacci sequence can be found in Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann, The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007).

  The history of the IBM 701 can be found in Paul E. Ceruzzi, Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), and Emerson W. Pugh, Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

  Janez Lawson and Elaine Chappell were both sent to the IBM training school, as reported in JPL’s Lab-Oratory newsletter, February 1953.

  Remembrances of hearing magnetic-tape audio recordings during World War II are from John T. Mullin, “Creating the Craft of Tape Recording,” High Fidelity, April 1976, 62–67.

  More information on how magnetic tape holds data can be found in H. Neal Bertram, Theory of Magnetic Recording (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  Thomas Watson Jr. told IBM stockholders on April 18, 1952, “As a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for eighteen,” as recorded in Susan Ratcliffe, ed., Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  Accidents at JPL during the 1950s were described by former staff in author interviews; little documentation exists.

  The inertial guidance system of the Sergeant is described in Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program.

  Leslie Greener, Moon Ahead (New York: Viking Press, 1951).

  Opposition to desegregation in Pasadena in 1950 and the consequences for the school superintendent are reported in Adam Laats, The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

  Janez Lawson’s marriage to Theodore Bordeaux was announced in the California Eagle, September 2, 1954.

  Chapter 5: Holding Back

  All personal anecdotes and family history obtained from author interviews.

  An excellent biography of Wernher von Braun is by Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 2008.

  Von Braun’s relationship with Walt Disney is described in Mike Wright, “The Disney–Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration,” in Daniel Schenker et al., eds., Selected Papers from the 1993 Southern Humanities Conference (Huntsville, AL: Southern Humanities Press, 1993).

  “Man Will Conquer Space Soon” was a series of articles in Collier’s from 1952 to 1954. Von Braun contributed eight articles to the series, including “Crossing the Last Frontier,” March 22, 1952.

  Von Braun’s reputation for arrogance and the jealousy he provoked in American scientists are described in Drew Pearson and John F. Anderson, U.S.A.—Second-Class Power? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958).

  The quote “extensive cosmic ray studies be deferred until a satellite rocket can be produced” is from William Pickering, “Study of the Upper Atmosphere by Means of Rockets,” JPL Publication No. 15, June 20, 1947.

  Plans for the International Geophysical Year are described in “Proposed United States Program for the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958,” National Academy of Science, National Research Council, 1956.

  Personnel records at the JPL Archives were used to calculate the average number of hires in the computing department.

  Details about Project Orbiter and the competition with Vanguard can be found in Dwayne A. Day, “New Revelations About the American Satellite Programme Before Sputnik,” Spaceflight 36(11) (1994): 372–373; Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970); Roger D. Launius et al., eds., Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (London: Routledge, 2013); Pickerin
g with James H. Wilson, “Countdown to Space Exploration: A Memoir of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1944–1958,” in R. Cargill Hall, ed., History of Rocketry and Astronautics (San Diego: Univelt, 1986).

  The conditions of the vacuum of space are described in Andrew M. Shaw, Astrochemistry: From Astronomy to Astrobiology (Chichester, England: John Wiley, 2006).

  The challenges with leaving the atmosphere are explained in Paul A. Tiper and Gene Mosca, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 6th ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2007).

  The science of multistage rocketry, including the necessary speed and direction to achieve escape velocity and enter orbit, is explained in George P. Sutton and Oscar Biblarz, Rocket Propulsion Elements (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2009).

  A history of Redstone and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency can be found in T. Gary Wicks, Huntsville Air and Space (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2010).

  How Project Vanguard was chosen over Project Orbiter is described in Green and Lomask, Vanguard.

  A history of Hotel Del Coronado can be found in Donald Langmead, Icons of American Architecture: From the Alamo to the World Trade Center (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2009).

  Jupiter-C is described in Clayton R. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Abigail Foerstner, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009); Roger D. Launius and Dennis R. Jenkins, eds., To Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002); Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and James M. Grimwood and Frances Strowd, “History of the Jupiter Missile System,” Report of U.S. Army Missile Command, July 27, 1962.