Gladys Perkins: The Pioneer Who Took Us To New Heights

Is the moon made of cheese? Of course not. But can a person walk
on the surface? Not too long ago, we couldn’t answer that
question. But with the help of Gladys Perkins, we soon figured
out that we could send a team to the moon and have them safely
land on its surface. 

There was a time when the United States was behind the Soviets in
the space race. Everyone had their sights set on the moon. Andrew
Chaikin describes NASA’s disastrous Ranger missions. Erik Conway
explains how complicated the trajectory calculations were—and to
top it all off, why they often couldn’t be done in advance. To
succeed, NASA’s new Surveyor program would need the capability to
adjust trajectory mid-flight. Gladys Perkins made those
calculations possible. But her part in this story hasn’t been
well documented. Our editor Kim Huang recounts how difficult it
was to get details of her story. And Vahe Peroomian explains how
important it is to get these histories told to inspire the next
generation to take on moonshot projects.


Finding information about Gladys Perkins was tough. We found some
breadcrumbs to her story on this Hughes Aircraft blog.


If you want to read up on some of our research on Gladys Perkins,
you can check out all our bonus material over at
redhat.com/commandlineheroes. 


Follow along with the episode transcript.