Posted on 02/24/2020 8:58:07 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 hit film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died. She was 101.
Johnson died Monday of natural causes at a retirement community in Newport News, Virginia, family attorney Donyale Y. H. Reavis told The Associated Press.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement that Johnson “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color.”
Johnson was one of the “computers” who solved equations by hand during NASA’s early years and those of its precursor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
Johnson and other black women initially worked in a racially segregated computing unit in Hampton, Virginia, that wasn’t officially dissolved until NACA became NASA in 1958. Signs had dictated which bathrooms the women could use.
Johnson focused on airplanes and other research at first. But her work at NASA’s Langley Research Center eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space program.
“Our office computed all the (rocket) trajectories,” Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.”
In 1961, Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space. The next year, she manually verified the calculations of a nascent NASA computer, an IBM 7090, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.
“Get the girl to check the numbers,” a computer-skeptical Glenn had insisted in the days before the launch.
(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...
Truth is, America was not nearly as bad as the race hustlers and the feminists try to portray in their revisionist history.
Yep. I was watching a you tube video wherein a young black woman, seeing that Elvis’ backup singers, in 1975, were multiracial said “Wow could you even do that back then”?
“One of the worst day of my life was when I dropped the atmosphere of Mars on the floor!”
What does that mean?
She calculated by hand trajectories and such prior to their being any computers that did that work (at NACA) and later verified the calculations of a nascent (one just coming into existence) computer system for one of John Glenn’s missions.
Re-read the article, you’ll probably get it the second time around.
I saw the movie *Hidden Figures*.
It was very good.
I took it as a form of respect. Everyone knew who Glenn was wanting to check the numbers.
I was watching Smithsonian last night and they had a series on the Green Book that all blacks back then carried at all times due to Jim Crow laws. It noted places where blacks could eat, sleep when they traveled. It marked gas stations that would serve them, the sunset towns to avoid. Sunset towns are where blacks couldn’t be out after dark.
I never knew about the book until the movie came out a year or so ago.
"15-20 percent back, tops..."
Unfortunately, one of the more ignorant statements on the thread.
Do you have any detailed information to support your claim? Anything?
I remember being glued to the TV throughout the Apollo 13 failed moon mission. It's problem was coming back from the moon, and none of the orbital calculations on how to do that had ever been performed.
The problem occurred when an oxygen tank exploded on the trip to the moon. There was not enough oxygen in the command module to return home alive. NASA (back when it was a REAL engineering organization) and the crew figured out a way to jerry rig flow of the oxygen from the lunar module to sustain those on board. However, that required returning to earth with the lunar module attached. This required a very precise rocket burn while the spaceship was BEHIND THE MOON, out of communication with earth. If it didn't start at the precise time, and last the exact number of seconds, the crew would be flung into outer space, never to return.
There had never been calculations made for this event that included the mass and structure of the returning contraption. It included the entire lunar module and its attaching structure, along with the command module and the damaged oxygen tank structure. It had to be done as soon as the vehicle reached the moon, in order to get back with sufficient oxygen. NASA had essentially two days, over a weekend to figure all this out. In addition to Mrs. Johnson and her fellow "computers", NASA also commandeered virtually every available IBM mainframe in the US for help with this task. They were successful, and the crew returned safely.
To put this into perspective, whatever device you are reading this on right now, has far-far more computing capability than NASA had available in the entire US, on that fateful weekend.
I'm quite sure I can. Not only that but I'm pretty sure I could have done so before I entered college.
ML/NJ
It was absolutely respect, no doubt about it. But it’s ironic he used the demeaning “the girl” at the same time respecting her.
She looks really really white?
Seriously? Considering the technology of the era, I’m highly skeptical of your bravado. Slide rules and CRC tables were the tools of the day. The most minor mistake would be lethal.
From ‘67 to ‘70 I was with a NASA contractor at what would later become the Johnson Space Center south of Houston. One of my responsibilities was the maintenance of a FORTRAN program based on the formulas of Dr. Donald Gafford of TRW. He was a brilliant astrophysicist specializing in orbital mechanics. I was just a FORTRAN jockey. Big difference.
The green book predates Elvis’backup singers. My point is that the rising generation thinks that THEY ushered in civil rights and tolorance of weird sexual proclivities. The cognitive dissonance that exploded in a snowflakes head when he came upon a scene in a movie shot in 1977 wherein a father flippantly refrences a gay marriage in the family. The snowflakes head began skaking back in forth in denial as he began vocalizing scenarios that might explain this impossibility, such as that the movie was shot recently aND set in the 70s. When we hear that these people are delusional it is no lie or exaggeration.
Look are her hair and skin color.
We can see where she got the math gene.
... not anymore.
Obviously this was from the days of computer cards. I did that once I dropped a whole box of seismic data in the floor. Another thing that irritated me about cards, if you worked in a dry heat environment (say an electrically heated building!) and you stepped out into humidity with your box of cards. They absorbed moisture and swelled, sometimes to the point the card reader wouldn’t take them. Also maintenance people often were slow about changing the ribbon on the key punch machines. You’d spend a few hours merrily typing away, then you would discover no code or card number is written on the card. Drop those and you hate life!
If you’ve had classical mechanics & numerical analysis you can do it!
Aw, man! It’s still early out here! Not before my second cup! Have mercy!
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