Norfolkbookworm at the Movies: Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures (film and book)

Here's something you don't often hear the Norfolkbookworm say - the movie was as good as the book!

From reading past entries on this blog it is pretty obvious that I have an interest in reading biographies/autobiographies and that I am fascinated with space travel. Here the two passions collide and for once everyone wins.

The book by Margot Lee Shetterly is a great read, it covers the lives of many of the people involved in the early era of manned (and it was only men at this time) space flight but this time from the rarely covered point of view of the backroom women. In addition to this these women were black and living in a segregated America in a highly segregated/racist state.

The book covers their lives from childhood through their fights for education and then into their wartime careers where colour of skin temporarily mattered less than winning. After the war these women - incredible engineers and mathematicians continued to work for NACA/NASA and were an integral part of the space program.

I've read a lot of books about this era and I'd never heard of them so they really were hidden figures. I enjoyed the book but found it a little chaotic in style, however it covered so much time and so many people that I was worried how a film could ever be made from it.

The film sensibly narrowed its focus to tell the story of just three women and tightened the time frame to a taut two years or so.  This lead to a fast paced, tense story with real heart.  It also retained most of its accuracy and I do feel that if you just saw the film you would get a pretty fair idea of what the space program and NASA were like at this time. Apart from the amalgamation of NASA characters in to one or two leads the space history itself was spot on too if occasionally played a little too much towards dramatic crescendos.

I had two issues with the film, while I didn't expect the actors playing the Mercury Seven astronauts to look exactly like their real life characters the wrong hair cuts, especially on John Glenn really annoyed me.

The second issue is a little more nuanced - in no scenes where the actors depicted as smoking, and I really do think that in those offices where people were frantically trying to solve problems to safely send men in to space there would have been a *lot* of smoking taking place. Even in the climactic scenes of the film no one lights up in Mission Control and I know that is inaccurate from NASA images of the time!  Further investigation into this by Mr Norfolkbookworm gave the answer - if there had been accurate portrayals of smoking in the film then the cinema rating would have been higher and the distributors rightly wanted as many people to see this as possible! Full details on this here.

My final thoughts are a little more controversial, and point the finger at an American Hero somewhat:

In this film (and book) John Glenn is portrayed as the Mercury Astronaut who is the most accepting of the black women's roles. In the film his trust in Katherine Johnson is so great that he won't fly without her working a mathematical problem.
Yet... I've also read a lot of books about the Mercury 13 - the women who also went through the same training as Glenn et. al. (and performed better on many of the tests) - and it was Glenn's word that got their training scrapped and the idea of women in space, via NASA, postponed until 1983 - 21 years.

Since learning this I've always felt very ambivalent about Glenn's status as 'all American hero' but I guess that this just shows that no one is as good as they are portrayed and at least he wasn't a racist as well as sexist.

Digressions over - Hidden Figures is nominated for 3 Oscar awards this weekend, including Best Picture, and I would love for it to win. It is a heartwarming film, based on a great book, that shows viewers that gender and colour of skin really shouldn't be a barrier to doing what you love and being successful in it. #ThisGirlCan

Edited to add - Mr Norfolkbookworm has just let me know that his mum was also a computer, just like the women in Hidden Figures, in the UK and Switzerland - including on this project http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/literature/earlyhistory/p014.htm.

Not a space oddity

An afternoon with Colonel Chris Hadfield, National Space Centre, Leicester. October 2016.

After the joys of meeting and hearing the Kelly brothers at the weekend we were on the road again to meet another astronaut - this time the Canadian Chris Hadfield.

We got to the National Space Centre in plenty of time and had a little look around before the event - yesterday however it was full of school children (all of whom seemed to be inspired and enjoying themselves) and so we let them explore and retreated to the quieter areas before heading into the Sir Patrick Moore planetarium for what had been advertised as a q&a with Chris Hadfield.

We were however thoroughly spoilt as we got a wonderful talk and slide show from Hadfield. he has a great sense of humour and this came through in the anecdotes he told and the slides he showed - from the space heroes he thought he'd emulate to the little boy sitting in a box pretending to fly! I'm not sure what the Space Centre team thought of his demonstrations of how water behaves however...

After the talk there was time for questions and again these were answered with great thoughtfulness. He made sure that the children in the audience got to speak as well and again deflected some of the more 'interesting' questions with great humour.

After the talk we also had tickets to the signing session and here we were really surprised and impressed.  Chris Hadfield wasn't sat behind a table just signing but was wandering around and really chatting to everyone who was getting a book signed.  Mum got to ask him about boredom - and again he said that you can't be bored in space (before adding that there are only boring people not boring things!) before signing her book, shaking her hand and giving her a hug. I'm not sure she's stopped smiling yet!

My question was something that occurred to me at the Kelly talk when they talked about their medical training as astronauts. I was reminded of this when Chris Hadfield took a break in signing to talk about his medical training - how would you give CPR in space with no gravity to hold the giver in place and apply the pressure.  Apparently there are two ways. Both people are strapped down, the giver by the thighs, so that the compressions can be given. The alternative is to put your feet on the ceiling and push down on to the unwell person.  After this I also got a handshake and hug so like mum I've also got a silly grin on my face.

This was a great afternoon, and it was so nice to find that Colonel Hadfield is as nice in person as he seems on screen and page. I'm now off to re-read his autobiography.

Update to an earlier space blog

I am so pleased to find that there are people out there who don't be come quite so awestruck as me in the presence of space legends!

The second lecture that Jim Lovell gave on 1st November (that is the one we didn't attend) was recorded by an audience member and is online to view.  If you have 60 or so minutes to spare and are interested in why we travel to Pontefract for essentially just an hour's talk now you can see...

I hope I have this much energy and enthusiasm at 47 let alone 87...

To find out more about forthcoming Space Lecture events you can find them on twitter @space_lectures, on Facebook and at their dedicated webpage.

Meeting another space legend and personal hero.

Capt. James Lovell lecture, Pontefract. October 2015.

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I made the cross country trip back to Pontefract recently as the chance to listen to astronaut Jim Lovell was far too good to miss.

Now 87 Captain Lovell spoke for an hour about his four space missions (two Gemini, two Apollo), then took part in a question and answer session and then signed an autograph for everyone in the audience.  Amazing stamina and proving he really is made of the Right Stuff.

Although famous for being the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission it was great to hear Lovell speak about all three of his missions with equal weight.  I often find that the Gemini missions are overlooked and they were in fact some of the most exciting and important missions carried out as it was during these that the techniques needed for getting to the moon, and back, were trialed and perfected.

I always intend to take notes at these talks so I can write them up more fully afterwards but each time I just become totally star struck in the theatre and fail to do so.  Lovell's anecdotes about one little bit of his Apollo 13 story stuck however:

Lovell had been to the moon before, in Apollo 8 when he was one of the first three humans to ever see the dark side of the moon - the beautiful Earthrise image comes from this mission, his colleagues on Apollo 13 had not.  This meant that despite all of the peril they were in at the time Haise and Sweigart did forget everything to gaze at  the moon and Earth and had to be reminded that if they didn't pay attention to the mission requirements they wouldn't get home to show off their photos.

After the talk and a live narration of some film footage of the Apollo 13 mission came the q&a. This was hosted by Professor Brian Cox and I confess to being a little sceptical about this, I did wonder if it would become either all about Cox, or dominated by Cox's own questions.  Neither happened and Cox skilfully managed to work equally start struck audience questions into simple forms for Lovell to answer and also insisted that the young people in the audience got to talk to Lovell too.  Afterwards when it came to the signing session he disappeared from sight and the event was totally about Lovell. I am cursing myself as it was only after the session that I thought of a question!

I am now really excited to hear that Cox will be back at the next event (April 2016 - Gene Cernan) to do the same - our tickets are already booked!

Also if anyone was wondering about the accuracy of the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 apparently there are only minor liberties taken with true story and Lovell thinks it is a good film.