Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1161 - Meet the Black Female NASA genius who helped send the first American into space


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1161 - Meet the Black Female NASA genius who helped send the first American into space - a sense of doubt post #1515

I had planned some original content for today but between work and family life that didn't happen. But the original content is in production, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I reached all the way back in the "archive," IE. the unpublished drafts, and found this one set up three years ago.

I have since watched the film Hidden Figures about three times. I may watch it again. I like it despite its schmaltz factor.

Were There Any Women in NASA? (Video)
Meet the Black Female NASA Genius Who Helped Send the First American Into Space
August 26, 2016by NATALIE RIVERA


Katherine Johnson was one of the pioneering black female mathematicians behind NASA's first space voyages, yet most of us never learned about her in our history classes. Here's why.

http://www.popsugar.com/news/Were-Any-Women-NASA-Video-41448079










https://www.space.com/41638-katherine-johnson-celebrates-100th-birthday.html

Katherine Johnson, Trailblazing NASA Mathematician, Celebrates 100 Trips Around the Sun

By   Spaceflight

Katherine Johnson — a mathematician at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia who helped make human spaceflight possible — celebrated 100 trips around the sun this weekend.
Johnson, one of NASA's "human computers" whose calculations propelled NASA spacecraft to the stars, turned 100 on Aug. 26. Johnson is a retired NASA Langley mathematician who was integral to developing human spaceflight in America. Johnson, who was played by Taraji P. Henson in the feature film "Hidden Figures," began her career at NASA on a team of black women who were also referred to as "human computers." Like the other women in this group, Johnson broke down barriers as an African-American woman, despite anti-black prejudice.





President Barack Obama presents Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her groundbreaking contributions to spaceflight on Nov. 24, 2015. 

(Image: © NASA/Bill Ingalls)


NASA honored Johnson on her birthday and reminded the world of her unparalleled contributions to human spaceflight. A number of women doing incredible work at NASA expressed how Johnson's work inspired them along the way. "She opened the doors for the rest of us," Julie Williams-Byrd, Langley's acting chief technologist, said in a statement at NASA Langley. [The Women Computers of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Slideshow)]

An unstoppable force and a role model to young African-American women, Johnson began her career at NASA's Langley Research Center in 1953 after one of her relatives told her about open positions at an all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA's) Langley laboratory. The lab was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, who came from West Virginia, just as Johnson did.

Johnson analyzed flight test data and even completed trajectory analysis for Freedom 7, America's first human spaceflight. She co-authored the paper Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, which detailed the equations that describe an orbital spaceflight where the craft's landing position is specified. This was the first time that a woman received author credit for a research report in the Flight Research Division.





In honor of Johnson's 100th birthday, Julie Williams-Byrd, acting chief technologist at NASA's Langley Research Center, expressed her admiration for the legendary mathematician. 

(Image: © NASA/David C. Bowman)


Johnson's most famous work, spotlighted in "Hidden Figures," was for John Glenn's orbital mission in 1962. The mission required a complicated worldwide communications network. The mission's orbital calculations, which controlled the trajectory of the capsule for the mission, were programmed by a computer, but Glenn asked engineers to "get the girl" — referring to Katherine Johnson — to validate the calculations. She ran the same calculations by hand that the computer had run, and Glenn said, according to Johnson, "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go."
Her legendary career with NASA lasted from 1953 to 1986.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her @chelsea_gohd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. 








http://boingboing.net/2016/09/14/when-computers-were-young.html

When "computers" were young, brilliant black women mathematicians





Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures recovers the lost history of the young African American women who did the heavy computational work of the Apollo missions, given the job title of "computer" -- her compelling book has been made into a new motion picture.
One such woman was Katherine G. Johnson. At 98, she still lives in Hampton, and has emerged as the most high-profile of the computers. In the last year, she’s won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saw a building named after her and had a bench dedicated in her honor. On her birthday, in late August, #HappyBirthdayKatherineJohnson started trending on Twitter. In a few months, Henson, an Oscar nominee, will play her on-screen.
Like a lot of the other computers, Johnson studied math in college. She was also one of three graduate students to desegregate West Virginia University in 1940, but marriage and a family derailed her plans for an advanced degree. At NASA, she worked on the life-or-death task of determining launch timing. Her calculations helped propel Alan Shepard into space and guided him successfully back to Earth; they landed Neil Armstrong on the moon and brought him home.
She never talked about work much, her daughter Joylette Hylick said recently.
“To come home and start talking about complex equations wouldn’t go over with teenagers,” Hylick explained. Plus, “we had activities — church, sports, music lessons, the whole nine, so it was quite a full life. She was not a stay-at-home but she also was not a workaholic in the sense that everything revolved around that.”
Hidden Figures [Margot Lee Shetterly/William Morrow]

(Thanks, Jeremy!)

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 1380 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1904.14 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
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