Josh Sherman
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.
