Nasa's pioneering black women

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Usually it is the names of astronauts that people remember about the space race. But less celebrated are the teams of people working on how to put a rocket into orbit. Only in recent years have stories come to light of the contributions of the black women involved.

Many were recruited as 'computers', meaning that they carried out complex mathematical calculations by hand, before machines were invented that could do the job. Christine Darden started her career in the computer pool, helping the engineers work out the trajectories needed to bring the Apollo Capsule back to Earth. Finally, she broke through the hidden barriers facing women at the time, gaining a promotion to engineer.

(Photo: Dr Christine Darden at a desk in Nasa's Langley Research Center, 1973. Credit: Bob Nye/Nasa/Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:37.0	You're listening to the BBC World Service and now witness history with me Charlotte
0:45.6	McDonald. Until recently little has been known about the contribution of women,
0:50.9	particularly black women to America's space program.
0:54.0	But today we explore the highly technical work they did and how they pushed the boundaries to be allowed to do more.
1:01.0	Two, one, zero, ignition. to do more. In 1962 the US successfully launched a man into orbit for the first time.
1:10.0	Colonel John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
1:15.0	More than 200,000 wet-foot happy Americans draw their welcome for the man who flew twice around the world in the time it takes to go to New York from Washington by train.
1:25.0	John Glenn did a number of parades when he got back.
1:29.0	And so when we heard about that, a lot of us gathered on the corner of the campus there so that the parade went right by us.
1:38.0	This is Christine Darden.
1:40.0	She was at a black college in the same town as NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
1:45.6	In just a few years, Christine would join the space program, but she wasn't their typical
1:50.0	recruit, certainly not the image you'd get from watching the news.
1:53.4	Launch control already.
1:55.3	Stand by for a countdown.
1:56.6	Roger.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.