Frances Northcutt

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Frances Northcutt 2019

Frances "Poppy" Northcutt (* 10. August 1943 in Many , Louisiana ) is a Texan engineer and lawyer who her career as a " human computer started" and then during the space race as an engineer for the technical staff of the Apollo program, the NASA worked. As an engineer, she was the first woman during Apollo 8 in the Mission Control Center worked NASA.

Northcutt later became a lawyer specializing in women's rights . In the early 1970s she was a member of the National Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Today she works in Houston for various organizations promoting abortion rights.

life and career

Frances "Poppy" Northcutt grew up in Luling and then moved to Dayton . Northcutt attended Dayton High School in Liberty County and then studied mathematics at the University of Texas .

Engineer for the Apollo program

After completing her degree within three years, Northcutt was hired in 1965 by TRW Inc. , an aerospace company at NASA, as the "human computer" for the new Apollo program. She was soon promoted to engineer and was stationed in the mission control room for mission planning and analysis. As an engineer, she was the first woman to work in NASA mission control. Northcutt and her team calculated the trajectory for the Apollo 8 crew to return to Earth. She noticed serious flaws in the plan before it was carried out. If the swing-by maneuvers around the moon were delayed and used more fuel than planned, it was up to Northcutt and her team to make calculations and modify the plan accordingly to ensure the astronauts return safely. Apollo 8 was the second crewed Apollo spacecraft and the first crewed mission to ever leave Earth orbit. It successfully reached the moon, orbited it, and then returned safely to Earth on December 27, 1968.

Northcutt continued to work with TRW and NASA for a number of years and had important roles in some of NASA's historically most important missions, including Apollo 13 . After learning about the exploded oxygen tank during the Apollo 13 mission, Northcutt and the other engineers who developed the computer worked on a way to get the astronauts home safely. The program she was working on was used to calculate the maneuvers for the homecoming. For this, Northcutt and the Mission Operations Team were later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Team Award .

Non-professional books and articles claim that a lunar crater near which the Apollo 17 lunar module landed was named after "Poppy". However, Gene Cernan , the Apollo 17 mission commander , stated in an interview with the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal that prior to the mission he named a crater after the nickname his daughter used for one of her grandfathers. This nickname was "Poppie" but was incorrectly spelled "Poppy" in NASA documents. Apollo crews and the NASA Astronaut Office gave some moon features unofficial names to make them easier to identify. Other names that Cernan gave to craters near the landing site were "Punk", his nickname for his daughter, and "Frosty" and "Rudolph", the names of characters in Christmas stories for children. The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union and the US Geological Survey does not contain entries for lunar crater named "Poppie" or "Poppy".

Fight for the women's rights movement

Northcutt's own experiences with sexism and working in a misogynist environment led her to actively advocate women's rights. During her time at TRW and the early days at NASA, as a woman, she was only allowed to be paid for 54 hours a week, but mostly worked 60-70 hours. At the same time, she was paid much less for her working hours. While her male colleagues bought large houses, cars and boats, she could only afford a one-room apartment and an old car. She also often experienced sexism and harassment within her work environment. For example, her male colleagues had one of the mission control room cameras aimed directly at her for months and observed her with it. At the same time, the media were fixated on them too. In the reports on radio, TV and print, however, it was rarely about her performance, but only about her appearance and what clothes she wore.

On August 26, 1970, she took a day off to participate in NOW 's Women's Strike for Equality . This marked the beginning of her activism career.

As one of the few women who worked in engineering, Northcutt became increasingly involved in the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM). She helped hold demonstrations, strikes, speeches, press releases, and anything else she could to support the National Organization for Women (NOW). She said many times before the City Council of Houston ( Houston City Counsil ) and in 1974 the mayor of Houston named her first Women's Advocate of the city. In that position, she helped pass numerous laws to improve the status of women. She negotiated an agreement with the Houston Police Department that allowed women to become police officers and got the Houston Fire Department to allow women to be firefighters. She also led an important equal pay study that ran through the entire Houston city payroll. They even counted the toilets for women and men all over Houston, helping to bring that number closer too.

Northcutt helped dramatically increase the number of women represented on certain boards and commissions. She helped pass a law that banned hospitals from charging women for rape examinations and forensics. Northcutt later became president of the Houston and All Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women .

During this time, Northcutt continued to work at TRW and received a partial salary as she was on loan. After that, she returned to TRW for a while. However, she believed, "When you've got a job done, get out of that job." So she went to Merrill Lynch , a stockbroking firm, for a year . Northcutt then moved to TRW Controls and studied law at night during that time. In 1984, Northcutt graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Houston Law School and became a criminal defense attorney. Northcutt continued to advocate her fight for civil rights with particular emphasis and dedication.

Web links and literature

Commons : Poppy Northcutt  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Barteski, Ed (Editor): MAKERS Women in Space . Ed .: Kunhardt McGee Productions. Motion picture, Washington DC 2014.
  2. a b c d Jessica Orwig: This Amazing 25-Year-Old Woman Helped Bring Apollo Astronauts Back From The Moon. In: Business Insider. December 9, 2014, accessed September 9, 2019 .
  3. a b Chasing the Moon: Transcript, Part Two. In: American Experience. PBS, July 10, 2019, accessed September 11, 2019 .
  4. a b Cristan Williams: NOW state rep talks with the TransAdvocate about TERFs, trans-inclusion and civil rights. In: The TransAdvocate. April 18, 2014, accessed September 11, 2019 .
  5. a b Jane Ely: Frances Northcutt - Houston Public Library Digital Archives . In: Houston Public Library . April 3, 2008 ( Memento of August 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 11, 2019.
  6. a b c d e Reginald Turnill: The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account . Ed .: Cambridge University Press . 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-03535-4 , pp. 365 .
  7. a b c Rebecca Rissman: Houston, We've Had a Problem: The Story of the Apollo 13 Disaster . Ed .: Capstone Press. 2018.
  8. Audio interview: Apollo 11 and the Woman Who Helped Get It Home. In: planetary.org. Retrieved September 11, 2019 .
  9. ^ The Valley of Taurus-Littrow. In: www.hq.nasa.gov. Retrieved September 11, 2019 .
  10. Apollo 17 Lunar Module Onboard Voice Transcription MSC-07630 (PDF). In: www.hq.nasa.gov. Pp. 1–73 , accessed on September 11, 2019 .
  11. Planetary Names: The Moon. In: planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov. Retrieved September 11, 2019 .
  12. Jill Griffin, How Poppy Northcutt Helped Put A Man On The Moon. In: Forbes. July 17, 2019, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  13. a b c Alex Stuckey: Blazing a trail: First woman at Mission Control later launched career as activist. In: Houston Chronicle. July 1, 2019, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  14. ^ A b Amy Stamm: Calculating Trajectories and Breaking Boundaries During Apollo. In: National Air and Space Museum. September 12, 2019, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  15. ^ "I felt like if you were doing your job, you should do yourself out of a job" (Ely, 2008, ibid.)