Hidden Figures
My wife and I watched the movie Hidden Figures on Netflix recently. The movie tells the incredible true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – brilliant African-American women working at NASA in the 60’s during the early days of the space program.
The trio served as the brains behind the February 20,1962 launch of the first American into orbit, Ohio’s own John Glenn. The achievement turned around the Space Race against the Russians, eventually leading to the first man on the moon, another Ohio native son, Neil Armstrong, 50 years ago this coming July 20th.
At the time of Glenn’s accomplishment, I was in the eighth grade and recall listening to the launch over the school's intercom system during class. The flight only lasted 4 hours and 56 minutes, as Glenn circled the earth three times in his space capsule Friendship 7. He reached speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour. The successful mission concluded with a splashdown and recovery in the Atlantic Ocean, 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.
Here’s what John Glenn saw on February 20, 1962. Just 5 minutes and 44 seconds after launch, Glenn offered his first words about the view from his porthole: “This is Friendship 7. Can see clear back; a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.” Three hours later, at the beginning of his third orbit, Glenn photographed this panoramic view of Florida from the Georgia border (right, under clouds) to just north of Cape Canaveral. His American homeland was 162 miles below. “I have the Cape in sight down there,” he noted to mission controllers. “It looks real fine from up here. I can see the whole state of Florida just laid out like on a map. Beautiful.”
While Glenn was in orbit, NASA controllers received an indication that the heat shield on his craft had come loose. Glenn called the issue a “glitch”, a common term in Ohio, but apparently not elsewhere, as the term went “viral” from that point on (this tidbit came from a recent Jeopardy episode!). Glenn was instructed not to jettison the rockets underneath the heat shield during re-entry, because the rockets might be able to hold the shield in place. Fortunately, the “glitch” turned out to be a false alarm, but there must have been some tense moments during re-entry.
Glenn returned to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, making him the oldest person to fly in space. His mission’s primary scientific aim at that time was to study the effects of spaceflight on seniors.
Back to our mathematical heroines, the movie showed them calculating launch and re-entry trajectories on a large, multi-story blackboard with ladders to access the upper reaches of the board to make the calculations.
They also relied on Friden mechanical calculators to do the math.
Both the huge blackboards and mechanical calculators were mainstays during my high school and college days, as it was not until nearly graduating with my engineering degree did the first Wang electronic calculator became available.
 |
| Wang Electronic Calculator Innards |
It was 12 years later when Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the first desktop computer, dubbed the Macintosh and 23 years after that introduced the first iPhone.
My current iPhone now has significantly more computing power than that original Mac. As an engineer, I really appreciate and enjoy tinkering with the latest technologies, sometimes to the chagrin of my wife, who's has to contend with the nuances of all my sometimes quirky gismos around the house.
~~~~~~~~
Receive a weekly email whenever there is a new blog post. Just enter your email address in the designated spot below the blog and follow instructions to set up the notification.
No comments:
Post a Comment