Women Of Apollo
We speak to Poppy Northcutt and Joann Morgan about their time working on the NASA Moon missions
We speak with two former NASA engineers about their stories
POPPY NORTHCUTT ‘COMPUTRESS’, ENGINEER 1965 - 1980 How did you get involved with the Apollo program and what was your role?
I majored in mathematics at college and after I graduated, I got a job with a space contractor called TRW. I was hired as a computress and after a few months, I was assigned to a project that involved developing a family of computer programmes that calculated the trajectories that would be used in the Apollo program. I started working on the return to Earth programme, developing the manoeuvres to come back from the Moon, in 1966 and when the schedule for the Apollo 8 mission was accelerated I was asked, along with some of my team members, to go over to the control centre and work during the mission.
What was it like to be the only woman working in a male-dominated environment like that?
I pretty much experienced the same as what every woman who worked in an isolated environment did. You always felt like you stood out because you were different and that you would be noticed more if you didn’t perform well, so you always felt pressure to perform better than average. I was fortunate, the company that I worked for was very progressive for the time and I didn’t experience overt discrimination.
Was it frustrating to receive attention from the press because of your appearance and the fact that you were a young woman?
I increasingly found that frustrating because it had a cumulative effect. At the same time, I knew it was really important to continue to speak to the press, even if they were going to be dismissive and talk about how I was wearing my hair or whatever, because I thought it was very important that women and men out there began to recognise that some women were doing these jobs. The calculations made by you and your team were put to the test with Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to reach the Moon’s orbit. How did it feel waiting for Apollo 8 to regain communication after it passed behind the Moon? Well, that was very nerve-wracking because when you lose communication with them, you don’t know whether the engine had fired or not, whether the burn that they did was too long or too short. Apollo 8 was the first time that we had ever lost communication with a spacecraft in flight for long.
Did it hit you in that moment that you were making history?
It didn’t hit me at that moment because you’re so involved in what you’re doing and making sure that everything is working, you can’t be thinking about those extraneous things. Fortunately, the reason they were late was not because there was a problem with the manoeuvre, but because there are mass concentrations on the Moon that had not been previously mapped. So, every orbit they went around the Moon and collected data to build the profile of the mass concentrations, so in future missions they would come out pretty much dead on time.
Where were you when Apollo 11 successfully landed on the Moon?
I was at home resting! I was a return to Earth specialist and you’re not going to bring them back from the Moon to the Earth whenever you got two astronauts on the surface of the Moon. In the end, I probably did worse than everybody else because at the time, I had like an 11 inch a little portable black and white TV!
What can you remember from the moment of the landing?
Well, the images at the time were pretty terrible, I don’t really remember very much about what I saw, I was mainly listening to the audio. It was sitting there holding your breath, wondering if they were going to land or not because they were having a little bit of fuel problems going down. President Kennedy said we were to land on the Moon and return back to Earth – I never disconnected those. I only considered it a success if we did both of those things, it wouldn’t be a success if they landed and they didn’t get home.
You also helped to bring the astronauts of Apollo 13 safely home after one of their oxygen tanks exploded. What was the atmosphere like during that time?
It was a very tense time at the control centre for everyone because we had a mission that was definitely endangered. I think the biggest concern was that no one knew how serious the damage to the spacecraft was. When you’ve had a major loss like that, you don’t know what else might have been affected and that suspense was certainly a concern to everybody. But again, when you work on a mission, part of what you learn to do is you learn to focus and compartmentalise, you’ve got to do your job and do your job correctly. In terms of the return to Earth, our program worked great, it did everything it was supposed to do.
It must have been a great feeling to know your program worked successfully?
It was a great feeling to know that we knew how to deal with that problem. I think Apollo 13 was the most successful lunar mission because it showed even though we didn’t accomplish all of the mission goals, we accomplished the main goal, which was to get them home safely.
Do you have any advice for young girls and women thinking of going into the STEM fields today?
I still talk to girls that tell me a lot, ‘I’m not good at math.’ I hope they take part of what President Kennedy said to heart, because I think it’s truly the overriding lesson from Apollo, which is to do it because it’s hard, not because it’s easy.
JOANN MORGAN ENGINEER, INSTRUMENTATION CONTROLLER 1958 - 2003 What was your role during the Apollo 11 mission and what did it entail?
My job as instrumentation controller in the Launch Control Center firing room was associated with the ground systems that supported the launch phase of Apollo 11, understanding and following the health and welfare of all the instrumentation systems.
Did you know beforehand you would be the only woman in the firing room?
In later years I learnt that my director, Karl Sendler, had decided that he wanted me there and he said to me, “You’re my best communicator and I want you on the console.” I listened to 21 channels and I had to discern who was working what, if the systems were going well, if there were problems and when they were going to be resolved. It meant a lot to me because moving into the senior engineering ranks was an acceptance thing, I felt accepted as part of a really large team that was doing a very important and historic job.
It must have been extremely validating for you to get that recognition?
It truly made my career. The fact that I was there and seen by all of the managers, the contractors, the other NASA centres and Washington, that picture of me was in Life magazine and the New York Times, although it never said my name.
The public affairs officer said, “Oh, can you do an interview,” but I didn’t do any interviews throughout the whole Apollo programme because they didn’t ask the man next to me or the man four seats down. If they didn’t ask them, then they were only asking me because I was a woman and I just wanted to be part of the team, I didn’t want to be singled out.
Poppy Northcutt expressed her frustrations being singled out by the press. How was your experience of that?
So – unlike Poppy, I remember when she did those interviews – I turned them down. The only ones that I ever did all throughout the 1960s and ’70s was when they were going to talk about all the women in NASA. There was one or two of those magazine articles from France and Russia that showcased women and it was kind of strange to me how the foreign print media were more interested in giving a holistic story about women scattered throughout NASA, whereas I didn’t experience that with any of the US magazines.
Is it surprising that it was not of more interest on home soil?
I think it was just the times that we were in. When they selected a class of women astronauts, the attention turned towards them and they became the centrepiece of women’s achievements in space exploration, that was such a big thing and so important that they be given the opportunity to be astronauts. It was okay for me because by that time, I was moving into being a division chief and into management, going to graduate school and getting my master’s degree and I really didn’t want the attention on me, I just wanted to work and do what I was interested in.
What was it like to be the only woman working in that male-dominated space?
The men in the room were very respectful and easy to work with because we were on television
and so people could watch me. In earlier missions, I received obscene phone calls and I never knew where they came from. After the third time, I did report it to a man who saw the look on my face and saw me slam the phone down, and I concluded that he must have taken action because those calls stopped. I just tried to stay focused on getting my job done and that was what really buoyed me.
What was the atmosphere like in the firing room during the launch?
Things are fairly quiet in the firing room, the noise dampens down and you’re listening. There is nobody pushing a button to go, it was an automatic, final countdown. In Florida, we did not have that same ‘go’ system as mission control, so our whole strategy was that you only said something if you needed to cut off the launch. There were a thousand people listening who could make that request, but we all wanted to go and if there’s no reason, you’re not going to call for a cut off.
Where were you when Apollo 11 successfully landed on the Moon?
The firing room in Florida is not needed at landing and so most of the launch team were getting a little bit of a break and I was actually on vacation. Like everybody else on planet Earth I watched the landing on TV. My husband said, “Jo, you’re going to be in the history books someday,” and that’s the first time I really thought about it from the perspective of history. I knew from a scientific standpoint, because my personal hook in desiring to work in the space program was the new knowledge, and so the idea that it was going to be so historic really hadn’t struck me until the landing and then boy, it just walloped me!
Did you see yourself as a trailblazer at that time?
In the 1960s, I did not see myself as a trailblazer. I was so intensely passionate and focused on my desire to be part of that space exploration and the fact that I was a young woman doing it really was not relevant in my mind, not until the 1970s. When I got my master’s degree at Stanford University, it was really my professors there who opened my eyes to the trailblazer aspect.
Do you have any advice for young girls and women in STEM?
Well, I certainly want to encourage all girls and women to learn to be fearless about math and science. I’m lucky I was fearless because I had a father who gave me a chemistry set and encouraged me, even though I cracked the concrete on our patio with it he never fussed, he just wanted to know how I did it! In some of the sciences, we’re doing better but worldwide, we need women to care about science and engineering because the future of people on this planet is important. We’re over half the population and if we don’t care, we’re not going to get it right.