Thirdly, space exploration would bring an unprecedented opportunity to expand the body of human knowledge about the universe, prompted the pamphlet. Sputnik launched smack in the middle of the International Geophysical Year, and experts around the world fantasized over the cornucopia of data that might be harvested by a satellite or solar system–faring probe, a mechanical, electrical proxy for their own inquisitive eyes.
Katherine Goble certainly acknowledged the value of those three rationales, but for her, it was the one listed on the first page of the brochure that resonated most: humans pined to go into space because of their longing to know what lay beyond the confines of their own small world; they desired to leave Earth out of a compelling urge to go where no human had gone before. Katherine had always been driven by curiosity, and as the activity in and around Building 1244 crescendoed, it consumed her. Eisenhower’s brochure put forth a vague, practically useless timetable for when the United States might be expected to achieve a variety of objectives in space: “Early,” “Later,” “Still Later,” “And Much Later Still.” The real schedule—and no one knew this better than the people in Building 1244—was As Soon As Humanly Possible. When America should venture beyond the confines of Earth was just as obvious as why. But how? That was what Katherine Goble ached to know.
She was far from alone. The plan for planting the American flag in the heavens, and the decision regarding who would lead the charge, was the table topic at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, at Wernher von Braun’s Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Alabama, and at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. Officials gathered around conference tables at the NACA headquarters and at each of the NACA laboratories, concerned with plotting the quickest possible path into space. Nowhere vibrated with more anticipation than Langley. Katherine Johnson’s deskmates—John Mayer, Ted Skopinski, Alton Mayo, Harold “Al” Hamer, Carl Huss—moved from one meeting to another, conferring with each other, with their bosses, with representatives of aircraft manufacturers and military services, turning to every possible source in order to aggregate intelligence for the still inchoate endeavor.
The only real reference that the Langley brain busters could lay their hands on was Introduction to Celestial Mechanics, a 1914 textbook by Forest Ray Moulton. So the engineers, who knew more about flying vehicles than any others, began scaling the next learning curve. Katherine’s branch chief, Henry Pearson, organized a “self-education” lecture series that began in February 1958 and lasted through May, drafting individual engineers in Flight Research and PARD to present on one of seventeen topics related to space technology. Even in the early, confusing months after Sputnik, the top engineers in those divisions, with decades of experience in flight-test research (and many with a not-so-secret love of science fiction) sensed that they were on the cusp of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They threw themselves into the class. John Mayer tackled orbital mechanics, Al Hamer lectured on rocket propulsion, and Alton Mayo handled reentry, the problems faced by an object returning to Earth. Carl Huss taught the physics of the solar system. Ted Skopinski was the trajectories guy, elaborating on the math describing the path taken by a space vehicle as it left Earth’s surface and settled into orbit around it.
Katherine Goble had fallen in love with her job at Langley virtually the moment she walked through the door of West Computing. The four years she had spent doing monotonous calculations on gust alleviation had only intensified the desire to drain every drop of knowledge she could from the engineers she worked with. With the transmutation of her division’s priorities from aeronautics to space, however, her work was taking a particularly toothsome turn. Massaging the Monroe calculator and filling out the data sheets, which grew longer and wider as the work became more intricate, would still be part of her daily duties. But the engineers in the group now assigned her the job of preparing the charts and equations for the well-received space technology lectures. It was like a bell sounding, taking her back to the course on the analytic geometry of space that Dr. Claytor had created for her. Claytor’s demanding, rapid-fire instruction had laid the foundation both for the content of the work at hand and for its intensity. That preparation was critical as she put the abstract three-dimensional Cartesian plane to use in the service of the space technology lectures, which were eventually compiled in written form. It was the textbook of space the place, being written in real time.
Katherine listened carefully to everything the engineers said, strained for snippets of conversation, and devoured Aviation Week like a kid reading the funny papers. The real action, she knew, was taking place there in the lectures and editorial meetings, those closed-door sessions where engineers subjected preliminary research reports to the same relentless scrutiny and stress testing that they applied to the aircraft they engineered. Her interest in the proceedings of the meetings increased in direct proportion to her proximity to them. By the measure of the rest of the country, she was an insider’s insider. She enjoyed a front-row seat at a spectacle that the rest of the citizenry learned about in the daily newspaper and on the nightly news. But however close she sat to the room where the meetings took place, she was still an outsider if she couldn’t get in the door.
Building an airplane was nothing compared to shepherding research through Langley’s grueling review process. “Present your case, build it, sell it so they believe it”—that was the Langley way. The author of a NACA document—a technical report was the most comprehensive and exacting, a technical memorandum slightly less formal—faced a firing squad of four or five people, chosen for their expertise in the topic. After a presentation of findings, the committee, which had read and analyzed the report in advance, let loose a barrage of questions and comments. The committee was brusque, thorough, and relentless in rooting out inaccuracies, inconsistencies, incomprehensible statements, and illogical conclusions obscured by technical gibberish. And that was before subjecting the report to the style, clarity, grammar, and presentation standards that were Pearl Young’s legacy, before the addition of the charts and fancy graphics that reduced the data sheet to a coherent, visually persuasive point. A final report might be months, even years, in the making.
Katherine sat down with the engineers to review the requirements for the space technology lectures and the research reports that were starting to come out of the process. She listened closely to their instructions and, as was her habit, she asked questions. Not just questions designed to clarify the marching orders she had been given, but the kind of queries she had fired at her parents and teachers as a child, meant to broaden and deepen her understanding of how things work so she could create a more refined model of the world. Why did the trajectory equation need to account for the oblateness of Earth? Why was it necessary to calculate an error ellipsoid to accurately predict the satellite’s return to the planet’s surface?
She had asked plenty of questions when the scope of her work had extended only from the nose cone of a tiny Cessna 405 to its tail fin. Now there was so much more to ask, so much more to understand, and because it was all new, she felt like she was right there on the learning curve with the engineers. As the work intensified, something that had been hibernating in her mind awakened, and once roused it would not go away. She considered the issue and checked its logic, just as she did with her analytical work. At first she asked it only of herself, but eventually she came to the engineers with the question.
“Why can’t I go to the editorial meetings?” she asked the engineers. A postgame recap of the analysis wasn’t nearly as thrilling as being there for the main event. How could she not want to be a part of the discussion? They were her numbers, after all.