Calamansis - Plant Biochemist

Remember the Women Who Made #Apollo50th Possible

As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic Moon landing, we remember some of the women whose hard work and ingenuity made it possible. The women featured here represent just a small fraction of the enormous contributions made by women during the Apollo era. 

Margaret Hamilton, Computer Programmer

Margaret Hamilton led the team that developed the building blocks of software engineering — a term that she coined herself. Her systems approach to the Apollo software development and insistence on rigorous testing was critical to the success of Apollo. In fact, the Apollo guidance software was so robust that no software bugs were found on any crewed Apollo missions, and it was adapted for use in Skylab, the Space Shuttle and the first digital fly-by-wire systems in aircraft.

In this photo, Hamilton stands next to a stack of Apollo Guidance Computer source code. As she noted, “There was no second chance. We all knew that.”

Katherine Johnson, Aerospace Technologist

As a very young girl, Katherine Johnson loved to count things. She counted everything, from the number of steps she took to get to the road to the number of forks and plates she washed when doing the dishes.

As an adult, Johnson became a “human computer” for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958, became NASA. Her calculations were crucial to syncing Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the Moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. “I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don’t want to go to work.“

Judy Sullivan, Biomedical Engineer

This fabulous flip belongs to biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan, who monitored the vital signs of the Apollo 11 astronauts throughout their spaceflight training via small sensors attached to their bodies. On July 16, 1969, she was the only woman in the suit lab as the team helped Neil Armstrong suit up for launch.

Sullivan appeared on the game show “To Tell the Truth,” in which a celebrity panel had to guess which of the female contestants was a biomedical engineer. Her choice to wear a short, ruffled skirt stumped everyone and won her a $500 prize. In this photo, Sullivan monitors a console during a training exercise for the first lunar landing mission.

Billie Robertson, Mathematician

Billie Robertson, pictured here in 1972 running a real-time go-no-go simulation for the Apollo 17 mission, originally intended to become a math teacher. Instead, she worked with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which later became rolled into NASA. She created the manual for running computer models that were used to simulate launches for the Apollo, Skylab and Apollo Soyuz Test Project programs. 

Robertson regularly visited local schools over the course of her career, empowering young women to pursue careers in STEM and aerospace.

Mary Jackson, Aeronautical Engineer

In 1958, Mary Jackson became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. Her engineering specialty was the extremely complex field of boundary layer effects on aerospace vehicles at supersonic speeds.

In the 1970s, Jackson helped the students at Hampton’s King Street Community center build their own wind tunnel and use it to conduct experiments. “We have to do something like this to get them interested in science,” she said for the local newspaper. “Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists, and don’t even know of the career opportunities until it is too late.”

Ethel Heinecke Bauer, Aerospace Engineer

After watching the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, Ethel Heinecke Bauer changed her major to mathematics. Over her 32 years at NASA, she worked at two different centers in mathematics, aerospace engineering, development and more. 

Bauer planned the lunar trajectories for the Apollo program including the ‘free return’ trajectory which allowed for a safe return in the event of a systems failure  — a trajectory used on Apollo 13, as well as the first three Apollo flights to the Moon. In the above photo, Bauer works on trajectories with the help of an orbital model.

Follow Women@NASA for more stories like this one, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Men: Your Consent Matters Too

Fellas, listen.

You don’t have to do anything sexual that you’re not interested in. Moreover, you don’t have to explain why. “No” is a complete sentence.

Not interested in getting pegged? You don’t have to. Monogamous and not into the idea of another partner? Okay. Not sure about period sex? Cool.

And if your partner decides to question or mock your maturity or your masculinity or your sexuality because you say no? It’s time to re-evaluate the relationship. See if you don’t deserve better than that.

IMPORTANT

PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL PAST THIS

PLEASE VOTE YES FOR GAY MARRIAGE IN THE PHILIPPINES!!!

http://www.congress.gov.ph/

Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

Follow @the-future-now

Moon (Oct. 30, 2019)

Types of biologists

Zoologist - a huge ass nerd who wanted to learn about mammals but now is in absolute ecstasy when seeing a worm

Microbiologist - haven't seen sunlight in 4 years, resistant to bad smells, despises being outside

Botanist - secretly waits for you to ask them about what's that plant, lives through the herb life aesthetics

Plant physiologist - is tired from telling everyone they're not a botanist, neglected lab child no one wants to accept into the lab community

Ecologist - just wanted to be in the nature and now is crying over their statistical analysis

Physiologist - wants to recruit you for their research, bitches about hormones

Hydrobiologist - just chilling, sometimes goes on boat trips

Molecular biologist - puts different liquids in centrifuge for 5 hours and drinks coffee at that time and does it every day

Toxicologist - tells everyone they can poison you but really just finds out different ways how plastic is going to kill us all

Neuroscientist - that one girl you knew in highschool who was very quiet but now is still quiet runs a studyblr and posts anatomical drawings of brains

Forensic scientist - huge fan of Stephen King, still kind of questioning their life choices

Biotechnologist - the corporate scientist, we don't talk about them in here

Bioinformatician - can tell you about your dna and code a program for you

Geneticist - exactly what you would expect from people who started out with a dude looking at peas for a long time, in hate/love long term relationship with gel electrophoresis

Biochemist - laughs about inorganic chemists, ignores lab safety while working with concentrated acids of pH 2

[Insert overly specific field] scientist - bitching about how no one ever knows the thing they're studying