Want to learn the ideas in Rise of the Rocket Girls better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Hol here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of Rise of the Rocket Girls
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Rise of the Rocket Girls, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Nathalia Hol.
1-Page Summary of Rise of the Rocket Girls
Overview
Despite the many advances in feminism and women’s rights, there are still people who don’t think that women can play a role in science.
Most history books and movies about space focus on the astronauts in space and the male engineers in the control room. However, women were a crucial part of those missions. While they didn’t get recognized at that time, we now recognize their importance to making all those male accomplishments possible.
Computers were once inferior to humans. However, women have contributed to space missions despite their lack of engineering degrees. Women’s contributions in the field of space exploration are often overlooked and unappreciated.
Big Idea #1: Barbara Canright was the first of the female computers to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
After they won a grant from the National Academy of Sciences, three friends started JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in 1939. They hired Richard and Barbara Canright to help them run the lab.
Richard met Barbara at Caltech. She was a typist and he was a graduate student. He also met the founders of JPL there.
JPL was a facility that designed jet engines. One of their experiments with planes was to build an engine that could quickly get airplanes into the air. This would have helped them save time and shorten runways. JPL pursued this goal by attaching rockets, which were interesting because they’re associated with science fiction, to small planes so they could fly quicker. They called these experimental planes “jet engines,” but later admitted it was actually rockets attached to a plane instead of a regular jet engine.
In the 1940s, a lot of scientific experiments were conducted to measure force and propulsion. To do this, they needed a lot of calculations done by hand because there weren’t computers then. Barbara Canright was hired as one of the first people who did these calculations. She was very good at it and she helped JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) recruit two more women to work with her: Virginia Prettyman and Macie Roberts.
Roberts was soon promoted to supervisor and tasked with hiring new employees. She set about establishing a female computer team within the engineering department, which was not typical in the early 1940s. Most places wouldn’t put a woman in charge of hiring and managing her own all-female division within an engineering department. But JPL wasn’t like most companies at that time; it was unique because it welcomed women into its workforce.
Big Idea #2: JPL expanded rapidly and soon began working on military rockets.
It took a few crashes and explosions, but finally, on August 12th 1941, JPL managed to reduce an airplane’s takeoff length by 50%. It was good timing too. The United States entered World War II just a few months later and JPL won a lucrative contract from the US Army. Thanks to this influx of money, JPL expanded quickly and was able to engineer new and effective military rockets.
As they grew, the company was able to hire new employees. They also advertised in newspapers and on college bulletin boards for engineers with advanced math skills. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a significant number of women were able to gain engineering degrees.
In the 1940s, scientists at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) were trying to figure out the best mixture for rocket fuel. They analyzed many experiments and spent a lot of time on that task.
Chemist Jack Parsons figured out how to make the mixture. He came up with using liquefied asphalt as the main ingredient in a 70-30 ratio of Texaco No. 18 and lubricating oil, plus potassium perchlorate for the oxidizer. However, it would have taken longer if computers at JPL hadn’t helped determine that mix.
