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NASA names headquarters after first Black female engineer Mary W. Jackson
- austincheney 6y agoEdit: the article spells this out. She was the junior of the three starring characters in the movie Hidden Figures. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures
- warent 6y agoI'm not much of a movie watcher but this one is an outstanding one! Highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't already seen it.
- a-wu 6y agoA great movie indeed however it uses the white savior trope gratuitously. The scene where Kevin Costner’s character lets Octavia Spencer’s character into the mission control room never happened in real life.
- earthboundkid 6y agoI didn’t read it as Costner being a “savior”. She had all the agency and action. She just needed someone to give her a fair shake. I should go back and read the book though because I’m curious about where they bent the story for dramatic purposes.
- faitswulff 6y agoYeah, that trope is regrettable. Don't forget the entirely fictitious scene where Costner's character "ended" segregated bathrooms by taking down a "whites only" sign.
- rst 6y agoThere are other... issues with the movie. At the end, Katherine Johnson is shown running between her office in Virginia, and Mercury mission control, which was actually in Florida. This has to do with her checking computer calculations of orbits for John Glenn's flight -- something she actually did do, but it's depicted as being done in minutes, and it actually took her more like a week. (Computers of the time were damn slow by modern standards, but they were still faster than that!) It was not a big secret that the Redstone rocket (a souped-up V2) couldn't put something as heavy as a Mercury capsule into orbit. And so forth. The movie's a good story, but if you want actual history, read the book.
- ghostpepper 6y agoI didn't think Costner's character even existed in real life but I'm also not convinced that fact detracts much from the film.
- austincheney 6y agoOctavia Spenser plays Dorothy Vaughan, the programmer. Katherine Johnson was played by Taraji Henson. The movie deliberately side steps history in order to tell a story. For example the accomplishments of the three primary characters occurred during unrelated timelines. The three primary characters likely knew each other in passing but in addition to the different timelines they worked in unrelated departments on unrelated projects. Also Katherine Johnson took 3 days to confirm John Glenn’s landing coordinates within the week of launch. The movie reduced that to an hour effort holding up launch for dramatic effect. John Glenn really did ask for Johnson to personally verify the numbers though. There are three supporting characters that are real life figures: Al Harrison played by Kevin Costner, Jim Johnson played by Mahershala Ali, and Olke Krupa who played a fictionalized version of a real engineer mostly accurately depicted as Mary Jackson’s real life supervisor. The rest of the supporting cast were largely stereotype figures. Considering the historical reality I did not take the white characters as white saviors at all.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoThis woman should be on the front of a limited edition $100 US bill.
- drewbug 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_States_currency#/media/File:US-$100000-GC-1934-Fr-2413.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_...
- Rebelgecko 6y agoNo offense to Salmon Chase, but the bill denomination your face shows up on is not proportional (even logarithmically) to one's importance or worth as a human being
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SmallPeePeeMan 6y agoNot sure why you’re being down voted, unless it’s by racists or people afraid of change. I like the idea.
- chickenlottie 6y agoI agree and I’m not sure who’s downvoting you except people afraid of change.
- tartoran 6y agoIt’s a gesture that doesn’t literally cost anything but can make blacks feel appreciated and some sort of justice, a symbolic one. And yet, some people’s ego won’t allow for that. They have nothing to loose and yet their ego is freaking out.
- chance_state 6y agoYes, it must be because "their ego is freaking out". Lol.... This is the "they're scared of us" trope.
- Thorentis 6y agoAnd with that, racism was destroyed forever.
- shadykiller 6y agosexism as well
- sheqels 6y agoWe haven't been to the moon since 1969.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoThere have been six Moon landings. The last happened in 1972.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoBecoming a NASA engineer in those days must have been extraordinarily challenging. That Mary Jackson, a black woman, succeeded in doing so in a society, and a professional culture (engineering) dominated by white men (nothing against white men, am a white man myself, just pointing out an objective fact, please put your pitchforks away) speaks to her talent and the grit it took to achieve what she achieved. A well deserved announcement.
- electronWizard 6y agoProbably not to be honest, she deserves the merit she is getting for the work she did. However, the Apollo program in the 60s at it's peak was 4% of the US government budget compared to 0.5% today. The federal government was had a fire hose full of greenbacks aimed at NASA so I'd assume they were hiring huge numbers of engineers directly, and also indirectly through all the aerospace/defense manufacturers who were working on the space program while also simultaneously getting huge contracts for designing ballistic missiles. NASA has a much smaller budget today so I wouldn't be surprised if you've got to display much more merit in college or your career to get selected as an engineer.
- jjeaff 6y agoI think you are seriously lacking in historical knowledge and context for the general regard and treatment of black professionals in the 60s.
- dontspeak 6y agoWhen are you going to patch the https proxy bug?
- chickenlottie 6y agolol. Which one?
- cyberlurker 6y agoI've seen negative comments of people claiming this is fruitless and that it pretends to solve racism forever (here and elsewhere). No one involved in naming this thought that was the case. They are giving overdue recognition. I can't imagine why people would be negative about this besides feeling threatened.
- nickff 6y agoNASA seems to have started a pattern of naming things after people featured in movies, rather than those who contributed deeply to its achievements. Re-naming the Dryden Center to the Armstrong Center appears to have been part of an unfortunate trend.
- justin66 6y agoIf only Neil Armstrong had accomplished something significant outside Hollywood, perhaps then he would be worthy of having a building at Edwards named after him, is what you're saying? (he is a particularly bad exemplar of the point you are trying to make)
- nickff 6y agoDryden was much more important to NASA than Armstrong was. Armstrong was lucky to be assigned Apollo 11; he was not the best test pilot (having crashed an X-15 due to his own recklessness). If they were going to pick people who greatly contributed to the success of the Apollo program, they should have picked Houbolt.
- justin66 6y agoIf only Armstrong had accomplished something that made up for overshooting the runway and scraping the paint on the bottom of an experimental aircraft, perhaps then he'd be worthy of having a building at Edwards named after him. I cannot imagine what sort of act might erase the stain of that kind of universal infamy.
- RedComet 6y agoThey should have named it after their key man, Wernher von Braun.
- lixtra 6y agoWell, intent matters. She wanted humans in space, he wanted them in heaven (early in his career).
- onetimemanytime 6y agoStrongly disagree. If the overall contribution was close, I'd say give her name to the building but apparently it isn't. Also naming the building after her solves nothing, in fact its obvious why they did it. Yes, I know as a black woman she had so many things against her, but so did a lot of people back then.
- HerbsMan 6y agoWhen this nonsense stop? It was funny at the beginning but it's not any longer.
- murat131 6y agoIt will stop when all members of the society are equally treated by the government and all of its institutions.
- pyuser583 6y agoThis is Hollywoodification. They’re not naming it after Mary Jackson because she’s the first black NASA engineer, but because Hollywood made a movie about her. If some historian digs up a previous African American engineer, will they change the name? No. A while ago the Federal Marshall Service wanted to name their headquarters after Wyatt Earp. There was outrage, and they backed off. Something tells me that won’t happen here. Downvote away.
- mleonhard 6y agoThis is good because it encourages African-Americans, other minority people, and women to pursue engineering. There are so many people who would be great engineers but aren't. They are missing out on good careers. And society is missing out on good engineers. Renaming buildings is an easy way to help improve things.
- throwaway829 6y agoAsians do very well in America and they didn't need buildings named after them. Why do you think black people need buildings renamed before they start learning calculus, physics, etc?