Important People
This president stated that he would put a man on the moon.
President John F. Kennedy
She refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger which led to a bus boycott in Alabama.
Rosa Parks
1929
Wall Street Crash
Millions of people lost everything after money markets in the U.S. crashed.
Four of these are needs for flight.
Forces
Less than a month later, on 5th May 1961, NASA was ready. Live on television, in front of 45 million Americans, US astronaut Alan Shepard went into space for the first time. The flight lasted just 15 minutes and 22 seconds, went 187.5 kilometres above earth, covered 487.3 kilometres and was nowhere near Gagarin’s achievemen
Numbers and Statistics
He was known as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Her first job led to important changes in air traffic rules.
Katherine Johnson
1941
Japan bombed Peral Harbor in Hawaii and the U.S. immediately joined the war.
This slows down a flying object.
Drag
Often black workers felt they had to be twice as good as white people to achieve half as much. They made sure they were always on time, always worked hard, never made mistakes, dressed well and were polite
Extreme and Absolute Language
This president send the National Guard to escort the Little Rock Nine.
President Eisehhower
She got a math degree and was a teacher and a sock washer in Farmville, Virginia.
Dorothy Vaugh
1949
The Soviet Union tested their first atomic bob.
This pulls the plane to the ground.
Weight
President Kennedy was confident about his team at NASA, however. "I believe we should go to the moon!" he said. Kennedy wanted to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth in the next ten years.
Quoted Words
He was the first man in space.
Yuri Gagarin
She grew up in Hampton, Virginia and studied math and physics at Hamptom University in the early 1940's.
Mary Jackson
1967
In February, three astronauts died in an electrical fire in Cape Canaveral, Florida as Apollo I was ready to launch.
This makes the plane move forward.
Thrust
The Head of West Computing had always been a white woman. In April 1949 the position was empty, and Dorothy became Acting Head until Langley found someone else for the job. There were no black managers at the NACA, and certainly not any black women managers. She was clearly the only person for the job, but Langley was worried about upsetting white people in the town. They waited two years, and then they quietly made Dorothy Head of West Computing.
Contrasts and Contradictions
He was the second man to step on the moon after Neil Armstrong.
Buzz Aldrin
She traveled by bus and started her job at Langley on D Day.
Dorothy Vaughn
1965
The last of the Jim Crow laws came to an end.
This is caused by the difference in pressure above and below the wings.
Lift
Langley wanted to employ black women as computers*.
* Before there were electronic computers, maths was done by human ‘computers’. The mathematicians in this story are called ‘computers’.
Word Gaps