Rise of the Rocket Girls as the name suggests, is about the women (and some
men) that worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The story chronicles the
JPL from the 1940s all the way up to more modern times.
I do want to mention that this book is not the same as Hidden
Figures, which is what everybody has thought I was reading when I
mentioned the book. Rocket Girls does discuss the forward thinking diversity
of the JPL team but it’s a very minor blip in the story.
The book read very much like Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators
but not nearly as long winded. Incidentally, The Innovators had touched on the
female “computers” as part of it’s narrative.
Something that stuck out the most about the story is how trusting of human
calculations the team was for a very long time. Even though they had many
problems due to miscalculations, even casualties, they still refused to trust
the computers in the early days.
Was a fun read and definitely something I want my daughter to read and gain some
inspiration from.
