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Caption: SWE - News Clippings Book
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> Illinois Alumni News October 1963 lllinae Engineer Barbara Johnson Is Helping to Plot Moon Shot Barbara Crawford Johnson '46 counts herself lucky to be in the army of research personnel which some day will see the results of its labors blasted into the sky. She heads a unit at North American Aviation at Downey, Calif., concerned with the exacting task of guiding the proposed Apollo moon rocket safely back into the earth's atmosphere. Describing the project, Barbara explains, "When the Apollo comes home from its 240,000-mile mission to the moon, when it points back home at the tiny revolving ball that is our earth, it will be like threading a needle in the sky." To complete its mission Apollo must land at a preselected site within the f i r s t atmospheric "pass." As it enters the atmosphere it must proceed through a narrow "corridor" approximately 40 miles wide. If it overshoots the corridor it will not have enough atmosphere to slow it down. If it undershoots it will decelerate too fast for human survival. Her group, one of many working under North American Aviation and other contractees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on the Apollo program, provides spacecraft systems design requirements for other researchers, deriving them from analysis of the problems of entry and of the general mission. Barbara's husband, Bob, also an engineer with North American, is a supervisor in thermoanalysis. The Johnsons have a 4-year-old son, Eric, with whom they enjoy family outings nearly every weekend in the mountains or at the seaside. Eric is a regular boy, and "It's funny to hear him use words like heat transfer and temperature control—words he's heard all his life," Barbara recently told a Christian Science Monitor reporter. To a girl considering a career in engineering Barbara would lend encouragement, believing "It matters little whether you are a woman or a man if you have something to contribute." If a girl does choose this predominately male field, however, she cautions, "The biggest mistake a woman can make is not to act like a woman." Barbara enjoyed mathematics and physics in high school at Sandoval where her father, C. E. Crawford, A.M. '29, was superintendent, so she decided to try engineering. WJn)£__ejyrnhig_Jiex_^^_Jn_jH^ Women's Group System and the Society of Women Engineers and Architects. She has been with North American since soon after graduation when she was accepted as a junior engineer in aerodynamics. general engineering curriculum. Barbara, an Evans Hall resident, served on Student Senate and worked on the Technograph, in the Women's Athletic Association, s& 4 Barbara Crawford Johnson '46 walks past an Apollo spacecraft simulator en route to her office at the space and information systems division center of North American Aviation.
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