John Temperilli

Senior Emergency Response/Crisis Management Consultant

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@CrazyVibes_1 What an absolutely fabulous story. Amazing woman. My hat is off.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

Brooklyn, 1952. Judith Love Cohen, 19, asks her high school counselor about math classes.
The counselor smiles like she’s talking to a child. “Honey, nice girls go to finishing school. Learn to pour tea.”

Judith enrolls in Brooklyn College. Engineering.
Hundreds in the lecture hall. Women: one. Her.
“Boys laughed when I raised my hand,” she said. “So I raised it higher.”

She transfers to USC. Finishes bachelor’s + master’s. Never sees another female engineering student.
Graduates 1957. Class of 800. Women: 8.
America’s engineers: 0.05% women. She’s one of them.

Then NASA calls.

1960s. Apollo needs brains. Gender? Secondary. Competence? Everything.

Judith joins the team building the Abort-Guidance System for the Lunar Module. The AGS. The “oh crap” button. If the main computer dies, this box flies you home. Or you don’t come home.

“It had to work,” she said. “Because if you needed it, you were already dying.”

Orbital mechanics. Electrical chaos. Code that can’t glitch. She lives in equations for months.

August 1968. Nine months pregnant. Still at her desk.
Coworkers: “Go home, Judith.”
Judith: “The math isn’t due. I am.”

Morning contractions start. She grabs her printouts — pages of trajectories, circuits, logic — and drives to work.
Contractions get real. Team: “HOSPITAL. NOW.”
Judith: “Fine.” Takes the printouts.

Hospital bed. Nurses walk in. She’s between contractions, scribbling on computer sheets. “Ma’am, you’re in labor.”
“I’m in math,” she says.

Then it clicks. The final bug in the AGS. Solved.
Then she pushes. Baby boy: Thomas Jacob. You know him as Jack Black.

Next day she calls her boss. “I fixed the guidance problem.” Pause. “Oh. And the baby came too.”

April 13, 1970. 200,000 miles from Earth. BOOM.

Apollo 13. Oxygen tank explodes. Command Module dying. Three men crawl into the Lunar Module — built for 2 people, 1 day. They need it for 3 people, 4 days.

Primary computer stutters.
Backup comes alive.
Judith’s AGS.

It holds. Calculates burns. Aligns spacecraft. Verifies they’re not flying into deep space forever. “Without AGS, we don’t come home,” said Jim Lovell later.

April 17, 1970. Splashdown. Alive.
The world cheers the astronauts.
Inside NASA, engineers hug. “The backup worked.”
Judith’s backup.

Apollo 13 crew visits TRW to say thanks. Judith shakes their hands. No speech. Back to work.

She keeps going.

Hubble Space Telescope systems. TDRS satellites — ran 40 years. Papers. Patents. Mentors girls. Writes kids’ books: You Can Be a Woman Engineer. “Girls need to see it to be it,” she said. “TV gave them lawyers. I’ll give them astronauts.”

Raised four kids. Danced ballet with the Met Opera while doing engineering school. “My first loves,” her son Neil wrote, “were dancing and equations.”

July 25, 2016. Age 82. She’s gone.
Son Jack Black posts 2019: Photo of Mom, 1959, next to a Pioneer spacecraft. “My mom literally helped save Apollo 13. Finished the problem IN LABOR WITH ME. How do you top that?”

The counselor said “finishing school.”
Judith chose “finishing equations.”
Three astronauts owe their lives to that choice.

“They said I didn’t belong,” Judith said once. “So I built something that belonged in space. And brought them home.”

She never flew. But she made sure others could.
From a hospital bed. Between contractions. With a pencil.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@PBiondello @FoxNews Please look in the mirror. Please. You embrace a lying, bankrupt cause that has you convinced these are all criminals that have committed horrific crimes. Try to find the truth.
Add Pretti and Good. Come out of your echo chamber. The Sturm Abteilung (brown shirts) runs rampant

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@BreitbartNews And pass it onto the consumers. What the hell?
Are you that new?

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

CTEH Family Fund
https://t.co/MASIB7ck1R

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@Jim_Jordan As someone who has planned for and responded to this type of event, the level of ignorance embraced and uttered here is appallingly willful and obvious. Please retire.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

Totally agree Mr. Watt. And congratulations on your best lived life and career. Best to you and yours.

[JJ Watt @JJWatt]

Houston is one of the most underrated food cities in the world.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@JaredEMoskowitz @SenBillNelson @NASA Great pic. Had the pleasure of working with Senator Nelson on Deepwater response.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@JaredEMoskowitz Jared, honorable sir, you are as always, pointedly brilliant.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@chrislhayes Only if you want to ignore the arts, family outings and vacations, and some regrets when it is all over. Contemplate how best to spend the time making your memories. If sport, so be it.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@ValaAfshar Beautiful

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

Absolutely wonderfully terrifying. My daughter (with whom I share these types of “rides”) and I would go in a heartbeat. Where is this?

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

Gorgeous view. Another gift.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

@JJWatt Trash can & cardboard. Cover, slide, flip and dispose of. Or import a mongoose.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

Beauty

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

And yet another gift from planet earth.

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

This wins Internet today.
Filmed by Mark Smith.
cc @buitengebieden

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

And yet another gift.

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

Mount Fuji seen from the International Space Station.

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

More gifts

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

School of fish in the shape of a tornado.. 😊

🎥 IG: ta.tsu.1 https://t.co/lh3Cn3YIUP

[John Temperilli @jtemperilli]

Brilliant. One of this planet’s true gifts.

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

Stunning Northern Lights in Norway.

Credit: Aurora Borealis Observatory