Interview with Frances “Poppy” Northcutt: Mission Control Pioneer

Article

“Interview with Frances “Poppy” Northcutt: Mission Control Pioneer,” Interview by Emily Carney
Published in Quest Volume: 31 #4 (2024)

Abstract

Frances “Poppy” Northcutt was a pioneer for women and played a vital role in the early days of the US space program—including as part of the team that designed the return-to-Earth trajectory for Apollo 8, the return-to-Earth calculations for Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, as well as the struggle to bring Apollo 13 home—as the RTCC or RTE (Retro) Program Specialist. In this role, she became the first woman to work in an operational support role in the Mission Control Center in Houston—a position that supported the directors in the main Mission Control room and required 13-14 hour days when the astronauts were close to the Moon. Having taken the computer program home every night and reverse-engineered them, she was one of the few people there who read every line of code.

Hired as a “computress” by TRW Systems after graduating with a degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas, she worked on calculations for the Gemini program and then on the return-to-Earth calculations for the Apollo Program. After just six months of working at TRW, the Operations Manager promoted her to become a member of the technical staff (the term for an engineer) where she became  the first woman on the technical staff. The pay difference between what TRW paid a female computress and male engineers was so great that they had to give her pay raises in increments. Along with other issues of sexism she faced at the time, she and other female employees at the Mission Control Center worked to improve benefits for women, including maternity leave. After working with NASA, Northcutt briefly took a position at TRW in Los Angeles, California, to work on antiballistic missile weapon systems, but returned home to focus on women’s advocacy issues. In this new phase of her career, she was a  women’s advocate in the Houston mayor’s office in 1974, earned a law degree, became the first felony prosecutor in the DA’s domestic violence unit, then a criminal defense attorney working on reproductive rights and domestic abuse. She was also the president of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Citation

Northcutt, Frances. “Interview with Frances “Poppy” Northcutt: Mission Control Pioneer.” Interview by Emily Carney. Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2024): 57-64.