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“This movie portends that Johnson’s calculations were requested by John Glenn, and that the “heroic” numbers crunching of Johnson was responsible (in a very large way) for the success of a significant event in the space program.”

In the movie, Johnson’s calculations (which were, in fact, requested by John Glenn) confirmed the trajectories produced by the computer, which Glenn didn’t trust. The movie did not portray her calculations as having “saved” Glenn’s orbital flight, in particular, or NASA, in general.

I don’t know what your high-school math courses were like, but in the movie a numerical approximation (Euler’s Method) for solving a system of differential equation was used to calculate the latitude and longitude at which an orbiting space capsule would land upon re-entry. Johnson had earlier co-authored a technical report at NASA on using such an approximation method for this problem.

I don’t have any “white guilt” about the racial discrimination of the era portrayed in the movie. I wasn’t old enough to have been responsible for it. But I am old enough to remember separate “white” and “colored” restrooms, public schools, and seating on public buses. That’s just the way it was in Virginia at the time, and the movie accurately portrays these facts and some of their unintended consequences. I can be opposed to the “race card” played by today’s race hustlers without burying my head in the sand about the indignities suffered *within my lifetime* by blacks simply because of their skin tone.

I read the book and watched the movie because it was set in my hometown, not because I wanted to see a movie about the overlooked contributions of blacks and women to the space program. “Hidden Figures” is not a “black” movie. I enjoyed it as a mostly accurate portrayal of the U.S. space program in the early 1960s, and the (until recently, largely) unpublicized role of black women in it. It’s a good (not great) film, and I urge you to go see it.