Rocket Girl by George Morgan

Mary Sherman Morgan was born a poor farm girl from North Dakota. She would grow up to singlehandedly save the American space program.

But before we get to that, we have to start at the beginning--Mary's funeral. That's where George Morgan, Mary's son, met Mary's long ago co-worker Walter. "You need to tell her story," Walter told him, "You need to let people know the truth. Don't let her die nameless."

George, the Playwright in Residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) took up the challenge. He didn't know much about his mother, she didn't allow many photos to be taken of her, and "the Morgans are terrible record keepers". After years of painstaking research, the play Rocket Girl was staged at the Institute. The play got very positive, and a great amount of, press. The people wanted--needed-- to know more. Thus, this book, Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist was born.

The book is written as a novel in  the creative nonfiction style. This means that the story and people are real, but some of the details and dialog have to be "created", made up, by the writer.  For me, this made this one of the most readable biographies in the last few years. If I didn't know that it's a biography, I would believe it just as a good novel.

It is a well written and researched book. George spoke with many of Mary's collegues, friends, and relatives, and searched records in the US, Germany, and Russia. Rocket Girl is also an important book. As Dr. Ashley Stroupe of the  Jet Propultion Labratory talks about in the forward, Mary worked during a time when most men were off to war. When they came home, women were expected to leave work and go back home (or into teaching). Mary refused to do this, and she was accepted for it. Dr Stroupe herself continued Mary's legacy, becoming, in 2005, the first woman to remotely drive a vehicle on an extra-terrestrial body.

But this is not simply a biography of one person, it is a biography of the early days of the space race itself.  As World War II ends and the Cold War begins, we see the two sides lining up. On one side, we have Mary, the US military, and Wernher von Braun; on the other, Stalin, the politboro, and Sergei Korolev-the USSR's answer to von Braun. As we all know, the Soviets won the first shot with Sputnik, but thanks to Mary and her team, we quickly caught up.

And, what exactly did she do? As a chemical analyst with  North American Aviation--now Aeorjet-Rocketdyne--she came up with the perfect fuel for von Braun's rocket. (We learn from another co-worker that an "analyst" is an "engineer" with no college degree. Same job, less pay.) This is something even von Braun's own people couldn't do. North American Aviation called it HYDYNE. Along the way, we learn much about the inner workings of rocket science, government contracts, and working for a company under government contract.

By reading this book, I learned alot about the "science" in "rocket science", but more importantly, I learned about one of the unsung scientists in the first half of the 20th century. Without Mary Sherman Morgan, who knows how long it would have been before there would be a NASA, a space shuttle, or any kind of US space program. Furthermore, it shows how much times have changed-for the better. There were women in science before Mary Morgan, but not many. That is not the case today.

George Morgan accomplished his goal. His mother did not die nameless.