0:00 You take a look at the famous picture of Apollo 11 lifting off, and all you see is a sea of white short-sleeve shirts, black ties, and buzz cuts.0:10 Aye, hundreds of lads staring at their little green screens, looking very serious indeed.0:16 Four hundred and fifty men in that firing room at Kennedy Space Center, and tucked right smack into the third row, exactly one woman.0:26 Last episode, we looked at how a young shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib threw a stone into a dark cave and stumbled right into the Dead Sea Scrolls.0:37 Today, we're talking about someone who didn't stumble at all.0:41 Her name was JoAnn Morgan, and she fought like wildcat just to sit in that chair.0:47 Ooh, she had her brew ready and her elbows out, didn't she?0:51 Because they didn't just invite her in for tea and biscuits.0:55 No ma'am, they surely did not.0:58 Now, I know how that sounds, but hang on.1:00 July sixteenth, 1969, nine thirty-two in the morning.1:04 Out on the pad, you got that giant Saturn V rocket fixing to send Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon.1:13 Inside Firing Room One, Morgan's sitting as the instrumentation controller.1:19 Her board monitored the guidance computers, the radio signals, the telemetry coming off that bird.1:26 If her instruments went dead, the whole launch was dead.1:30 And yet, love, before that day, they actually locked her out during the big countdowns, didn't they?1:37 Swear on my tackle box, that's the honest truth.1:41 She'd worked there for years.1:43 She'd run the tests, prepped the gear, done the donkey work.1:47 But come liftoff day on earlier launches, security would come tap her shoulder and say women weren't allowed in the firing room during an actual launch.1:58 Fancy that.1:59 Allowed to scrub the floors and tune the engines, but not allowed in the room when the thing actually goes bang.2:07 It's daft, isn't it?2:08 It was plum ridiculous.2:10 It took her supervisor, Karl Sendler, marching all the way up to the top brass at Kennedy Space Center to demand she get her headset.2:19 He told them flat out: she's the best engineer for the console, and she's staying put.2:26 Imagine the nerve that took, though.2:28 Walking in there, three rows down, knowing four hundred and forty-nine pairs of eyes are waiting for you to drop summat.2:37 That's where you see the pattern, Nan.2:40 Every time a new machine gets built, whether it's a steam locomotive climbing through a mountain gap or a rocket heading for the moon, the world only remembers the folks holding the throttle.2:53 They build statues of the three men in the capsule.2:57 But three minutes and twenty seconds before Apollo 11 launched, the clock went automatic.3:03 After that, it was the people in that room holding the wire.3:08 It's always the folk keeping the kettle boiling who get swept out of the frame when the photographers turn up.3:16 She had to sit there and watch the dials while everyone else was sweating through their collars.3:23 Her console was feeding data on the lightning protection and the core ground systems.3:29 If a glitch spiked, she had to call it out in a heartbeat.3:33 When those five giant engines lit, that whole concrete blockhouse started rattling like an empty coal drag running over bad track.3:42 Eh, I bet her heart was going ninety to the dozen.3:46 But she never flinched, did she?3:48 Not an inch.3:49 The rocket cleared the tower, and history wrote down the names of the fellas flying it.3:55 But that picture from July sixteenth is still there if you look close.4:00 A whole room full of identical shirts, and right there in the third row, the woman who earned her console.4:08 Right then, love.4:09 Next time we look up at the moon, we'll think of her sitting right there, cool as a cucumber.4:16 Night night, sleep tight, chuck.4:18 Well.4:18 That's about the size of it.
