Page 66 - All About History - Issue 180-19
P. 66
COMPUTRESS’, ENGINEER
C
‘ ‘ C 1965 - 1980
C
Northcutt giving a lecture in
1969, just a few months after
working on the Apollo 8 mission
All images © Getty Images
How did you get involved with the Apollo felt pressure to perform better than average. I was Well, that was very nerve-wracking because when
program and what was your role? fortunate, the company that I worked for was very you lose communication with them, you don’t
I majored in mathematics at college and after I progressive for the time and I didn’t experience know whether the engine had fired or not, whether
graduated, I got a job with a space contractor called overt discrimination. the burn that they did was too long or too short.
TRW. I was hired as a computress and after a few Apollo 8 was the first time that we had ever lost
months, I was assigned to a project that involved Was it frustrating to receive attention communication with a spacecraft in flight for long.
developing a family of computer programmes from the press because of your
that calculated the trajectories that would be appearance and the fact that you were Did it hit you in that moment that you
used in the Apollo program. I started working on a young woman? were making history?
the return to Earth programme, developing the I increasingly found that frustrating because it had It didn’t hit me at that moment because you’re so
manoeuvres to come back from the Moon, in 1966 a cumulative effect. At the same time, I knew it involved in what you’re doing and making sure
and when the schedule for the Apollo 8 mission was really important to continue to speak to the that everything is working, you can’t be thinking
was accelerated I was asked, along with some of press, even if they were going to be dismissive and about those extraneous things. Fortunately, the
my team members, to go over to the control centre talk about how I was wearing my hair or whatever, reason they were late was not because there was
and work during the mission. because I thought it was very important that a problem with the manoeuvre, but because there
women and men out there began to recognise that are mass concentrations on the Moon that had
What was it like to be the only some women were doing these jobs. not been previously mapped. So, every orbit they
woman working in a male-dominated went around the Moon and collected data to build
environment like that? The calculations made by you and your the profile of the mass concentrations, so in future
I pretty much experienced the same as what every team were put to the test with Apollo missions they would come out pretty much dead
woman who worked in an isolated environment 8, the first crewed mission to reach the on time.
did. You always felt like you stood out because Moon’s orbit. How did it feel waiting for
you were different and that you would be noticed Apollo 8 to regain communication after Where were you when Apollo 11
more if you didn’t perform well, so you always it passed behind the Moon? successfully landed on the Moon?
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