GineersNow Engineering News Magazine Issue 3

28 ISSUE NO.003 WOMEN IN TECH & ENGINEERING
Rocket Women:
The Unsung Heroes of the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
by Dion Greg Reyes
At the time when curiosities about the outer
space surfaced, there were not much of computers
to do the task of calculating necessary data
in propelling men outside the Earth. The lack of
digital devices urged NASA to employ humans,
mostly women, to do the job.
In the early years of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) were women regarded as its computers.
They were tasked to do the hefty job of performing
calculations needed for the male engineering
staff to design rocket engines, calculate trajectories,
and related tasks.
These women were the key people in JPL’s first
important projects like missiles and satellites, including
United States’ first, the Explorer 1. The
laboratory soon became part of NASA and so
were the women, which were instrumental to the
early spaceflight projects of the space station, including
the Ranger series of lunar missions and
the Mariner missions to Venus and Mars.
With the advent of electronic computers, women
at the laboratory were challenged to compete
only with their slide rules, logarithmic tables,
and simple calculators. This shift enabled them
from doing calculations to writing codes – they
have become computer programmers from being
computers. Eventually, as women are more
accommodated to industries, they have become
engineers and managers at the lab.
These stories of the women almost unappreciated
at the time they were at the peak are outlined
in the book Rise of the Rocket Girls written by
Nathalia Holt. She narrated the personal experiences
of these women from the inception of JPL
almost up to the present day. The book features
the essential contributions of women in the development
of spaceflight that were not acknowledged
in the past.
More women in the modern age have become
part of NASA’s laboratories especially JPL but
history books don’t tell us about their involvements
– and that includes the stories of the Rocket
Women, the unsung heroes of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
Photos by NASA