151 1992 exposé: Ted Gup, “The Ultimate Congressional Hideway,” Washington Post, May 31, 1992.
152 “small ball in the air”: David S. F. Potree, “One Small Ball in the Air: October 4, 1957–November 3, 1957,” NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age, Monographs in Aerospace History 10, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, September 1998.
152 many of them, hundreds perhaps: Only years later would the United States learn that the size and capability of the Soviet arsenal was greatly exaggerated. See McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, 250–53.
153 We can’t let them beat us: Darden interview.
153 Radio Moscow announced: “Reds List Sputnik Time for Little Rock,” Washington Post, October 10, 1957.
154 “I just came to let you all know”: Christine Darden, “Growing Up in the South During Brown v. Board,” Unbound Magazine, March 5, 2015.
154 son of a former fire chief: Steven A. Holmes, “Jesse Helms Dies at 86; Conservative Force in Senate,” New York Times, July 5, 2008.
154 nonexistent science laboratories: Darden, “Growing Up in the South.”
154 they would not be good enough: Ibid.
154 “education, honesty, hard work, and character”: Wini Warren, Black Women Scientists in the United States, 75.
155 Pontiac Hydromatic: Christine Darden, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), The History Makers, February 26, 2013, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/christine-darden.
155 “What did you learn today?”: Ibid.
155 priming the carburetor: Ibid.
155 tearing out their stuffing: Ibid.
155 acres of cotton fields: Ibid.
156 released in time for the harvest: Ibid.
156 second-grade student: Ibid.
156 “Julia’s parents said she could go”: Ibid.
156 one of the best Negro high schools in the country: Rob Neufeld, “Visiting Our Past: The Allen School in Asheville,” Asheville Citizen-Times, April 27, 2014.
156 Cab Calloway’s niece: Ibid.
156 A 1950 graduate named Eunice Waymon: Martha Rose Brown, “?‘For Colored Girls’: Professor Researching Former School for African-American Female Students,” Times and Democrat, March 11, 2011.
156 Waves of homesickness: Christine Darden, personal interview, October 10, 2012.
157 Bettye Tillman and JoAnne Smart: “Letters of Intent,” UNCG Magazine, Spring 2010, http://www.uncg.edu/ure/alumni_magazineT2/2010_spring/feature_lettersofintent.htm.
157 “After careful deliberation”: Benjamin Lee Smith, “Report of the Superintendent to the Greensboro City Board of Education regarding Brown v. Board of Education,” 1956. http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CivilRights/id/547.
158 “I’ve been accepted at Hampton”: Christine Darden, The History Makers.
158 “Red engineering schools”: Washington Post, February 23, 1958.
158 Soviet engineering grads were female: Ibid. The article reported that at the same time, women were just 1 percent of American engineering graduates.
159 “civilian army of the Cold War”: Sylvia Fries, “The History of Women in NASA, “Women’s Equality Day Address, Marshall Space Flight Center, August 23, 1991.
159 took her breath away: Christine Darden, The History Makers.
CHAPTER 16: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
161 the winking dot of light: Katherine G. Johnson, The History Makers, February 6, 2013, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/katherine-g-johnson-42.
161 “One can imagine the consternation”: Reference Papers Relating to a Satellite Study, RA-15032 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 1947); F. H. Clauser, Preliminary Design of a World Circling Spaceship (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp, 1947).
162 a little too far out: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 17.
162 “backward peasantry”: Roland, Model Research, 262.
162 “First in space means first, period”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth.
162 Americans were ahead of the Russians: Ibid., 131.
163 “revolutionary advances for atmospheric aircraft”: W. Hewitt Phillips, A Journey into Space Research: Continuation of a Career at NASA Langley Research Center (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 2005), 1.
163 ended by a 1958 NACA headquarters edict: Ibid.
163 “dirty word”: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 17.
163 hard-pressed to find books on spaceflight: Chris Kraft, Flight: My Life in Mission Control (New York: Plume, 2002), 63.
164 an advanced version of the X-15 rocket plane: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 356–61.
164 “notoriously freethinking”: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 197.
165 had come online in 1955: Roger Launius, “NACA-NASA and the National Unitary Wind Tunnel Plan, 1945–1965,” 40th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting & Exhibit, January 14–17, 2002, Reno, Nevada, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/crgis/images/d/de/A02-14248.pdf.
165 “nearly every supersonic airplane”: Launius, “NACA-NASA and the National Unitary Wind Tunnel Plan.”
165 downsized to the new office in 1251: Langley Aeronautical Laboratory Telephone Directory, 1956.
168 gave Miriam Mann’s daughter a shiny new penny: Harris interview.
168 Eunice Smith volunteered: “Association Thanks Helpers at Party,” Air Scoop, January 2, 1953.
168 Dorothy Vaughan’s children counted the days: Kenneth Vaughan, personal interview, April 4, 2014.
168 Langley Air Force Base: Mark St. John Erickson, “Colorblind Sword: Military Has Become Model for Race Reform, Experts Say,” Daily Press, July 28, 1998.
169 “Integration anywhere means destruction everywhere”: Donald Lambro, “Pulitzer-winning Journalist Mary Lou Forbes Dies at 83,” Washington Times, June 29, 2009. Archival footage of Almond’s 1958 inaugural speech can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/131577357.
169 “How can Senator Byrd”: John B. Henderson, “Henderson Speaks: Closing Schools No Way to Cope with Sputniks,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 23, 1957.
169 forcing each of those Virginia school districts to integrate: Smith, They Closed Their Schools, 144.
169 “the ‘separate but equal’ education of the Negroes marks time”: James Rorty, “Virginia’s Creeping Desegregation: Force of the Inevitable,” Commentary Magazine, July 1956. Rorty’s article offers a fascinating snapshot of Virginia’s struggle with desegregation in the years just after Brown v. Board of Ed.
170 “Eighty percent of the world’s population is colored”: Paul Dembling to file, July 7, 1956.
171 NASA: For years, the folks who had worked for Langley prior to 1958 could be distinguished by the fact that they said the name of the new agency after the fashion of the old one, pronouncing each letter separately: “the N-A-S-A.”
171 “to provide for the widest”: The Space Act of 1958, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/spaceact.html.
171 “the bearer of a myth”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, 376.
171 “the West Area Computers Unit is dissolved”: Floyd L. Thompson to All Concerned, “Change in Research Organization,” May 5, 1958, NARA Phil.
173 “She was the smartest of all the girls”: Johnson interview, September 17, 2011.
CHAPTER 17: OUTER SPACE
175 “This is not science fiction”: Introduction to Outer Space: An Explanatory Statement Prepared by the President’s Science Advisory Committee, January 1, 1958. The pamphlet’s words “the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before” inspired the well-known introduction to the television series Star Trek.
175 “As everyone knows”: Ibid.
176 The only real reference: Forest Ray Moulton, Introduction to Celestial Mechanics (New York: Macmillan, 1914).
178 “Present your case, build it, sell it so they believe it”: Claiborne R. Hicks, interview with Kevin M. Rusnak, JSC, April 11, 2000.
178 months, even years in the making: This long lead time was underscored every time I read through an NACA or NASA research report: the cover lists the date of publication, but the date that the researchers actually completed and submitted the research for review is included at the end of the body of the report.
178 Katherine sat down with the engineers to review: Johnson interview, September 15, 2015.