This book had some interesting information in it but I found it to be a bit disjointed. It didn't seem to have a real focus. Was it about the author's father, the history of the JPL, a tale of Nazis and communists, a discussion of equality? It touched on all of these things but didn't seem to focus on any of them. In particular, if it was about equality, it did a poor job - it discussed gender and gay progress but did not mention race at all. Overall, I think it could have been a much better book, but it was not uninformative. ( )

4 1/2 star: Super, couldn’t put it down.

From the back cover: During the late 60s, while M.G> Lord was becoming a teenager in Southern California and her mother was dying of cancer, Lord’s father disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission. Remembering her pain at her father’s absence, Lord revisits her own youthful, eccentric fascination with science and space exploration as a way of understanding the ethos of rocket science that so captivated her father. “Astro Turf” is the brilliant result of her journey of discovery.

Into her family’s saga Lord weaves the story of JPL, the famed source of so many space vehicles, from its start in 1936 to the triumphant landings on Mars in 2004. She illuminates its father, Frank Malina, whose talent in rocketry was shadowed by a flirtation with communism, which drove him from the country even as we welcomed rocketeer Wernher von Braun and his Nazi colleagues. Lord’s own love of science fiction becomes a lens through which she views a profound cultural shift in a male dominated world of space. And in pursuing the cause of her father’s absence she stumbles on a hidden guilt, understanding “the anguish his proud silence caused both him and me, and how rooted that silence was in the culture of engineering.”

M.G. Lord is a friend of a friend, and I can’t remember if I first heard of this book from that mutual connection, or from seeing Lord at Festival of Books. I believe I knew of Lord prior, but not this specific book until FOB. I suppose I should have paid more attention to the back cover description, because this book was not quite what I expected--- but it was instead, SO much more.
What this book is not: Astro Turf is not yet another background, Andrew Chaikin/ Apollo astronaut/ Houston Control style biography. [Not that there’s anything wrong with those, I’ve read most of them, and Chaikin’s “A Man on the Moon” is one of my favorite books ever]. AT gives a history of JPL, but with respect to certain areas, such as women’s equality, gay equality, political equality. Throughout, it also tells Lord’s own story, her love of science fiction, her very real hurts with her home life. Perhaps the latter is what drew me to this book most of all—because I ultimately was drawn to science for many reasons in many ways, but part of it to escape my own living situation, different, yet the same, as Lord’s. AT instantly reminded me, sometimes in an uncomfortable way, of my own thoughts, reactions, as well as those of a good friend of mine, whose father worked for Caltech and who struggled with an “engineering father” as well.

“You and I see life the same, we just react to it differently.” – a very wise friend said that to me once, and I say the same to M.G. Lord. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I am bettered for having read it.

As usual with books, I will put some of my favorite passages here. This book will stay in my permanent collection and I suspect I will be giving copies for years to come.

“ This potential occurrence [having a particular boy kiss her] seemed as implausible and miraculous as a trip to the moon. I had no long term objectives. Because of my mother’s illness, I could not imagine the future, much less plan for it.” [ I have rarely read a passage that has struck me so strongly, down to my core, as something I can relate to—yet in many ways I know it was not the same for me. All I ever did was plan my future, as my current life was not enjoyable or worth living. Again, I react differently but the feeling seemed the same. I had no short term objectives, to go to prom or have the boy kiss me. I only long term objectives. –Lisa]
“I can’t believe I weathered some of the things I weathered. Maybe you either implode as a human being or you survive it all. And it’s close, which way you go. JPL saved me”. [again… yes. I get this].
I won’t quote specific passages here, but her detailing “Operation Paperclip” and specifically the war crimes of Wernher von Braun—who the US embraced in our Cold War space race—were very troublesome to me. I had heard of von Braun and his being a “Nazi sympathizer”, a vague term at best. I had not heard previously detailings of his involvement at Mittelbau Dora slave labor camp, which included a trip to Buchenwald to pick out “qualified” laborers. I will be reading more about this subject. When Lord then discusses Alan Turing’s history including his chemical castration and subsequent suicide, it is with great poignancy that she observes “During the space race, the West was willing to overlook Nazi war crimes to gain the upper hand. But not homosexuality”.
I was very intrigued by Lord’s discussion of Heinlein’s women—and the best compliment I can give, is that I am willing to reconsider the subject based on the strength of her recommendation. I found it quite charming, that Mary Grace became M.G., based on Heinlein’s proclivity naming women characters. I would become Hermione if I could get away with it.

When the space shuttle program was winding down, I realized how much I had wanted to view a launch, yet I never did so. I said more than once that I thought I’d regret not viewing a launch. Lord discusses viewing a launch, including of various Mars rovers, and I realized, “I can still see a launch”. I don’t need to see a shuttle launch, I just want to see a launch. I find myself more than a little envious that she was present at JPL for the landing of various Mars craft. Before I die, I will see a launch. Thank you, M.G., for reminding me of that.

“The Kennedy Space Center is a museum of the analog era, a celebration of sixties hardware, a place where the space shuttle viewed by many post-Columbia disaster critics as a seventies relic, is palmed off as cutting edge. It is also a museum of cold war masculine values.”

“I remembered the room full of inner children at Donna Shirley’s workshop and wondered what wounds those sunny youngsters would carry into adulthood. I thought of my own father, who had been so proud of Mariner 69 and ached to be linked with the bold men who flew it. “

“Maybe not at Kennedy Space Center but certainly at JPL, one gets the sense that science missions are actually about science, not pretexts to dazzle enemy nations with technical prowess.”

“For most of my adult life, my love of cold war sci-fi-and tendency to hold forth boorishly about it—has not been a social asset. But when I started reporting on JPL, it proved to be a cross cultural Esperanto. I had few life experiences in common with older male engineers; sci-fi brought us together. They had also escaped into Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Le Guin and Dick. “ -- [ Something else I relate to. Or as another Festival of Books author I saw last year, John Scalzi, said, the difference between nerds and hipsters, is that hipsters say ‘Oh, that was so last year. I don’t like that thing you like now’. Whereas a nerd will say ‘Yeaohmygosh I love that too willyougotoconventionwithme??? ]
“The only thing worse than having your darkest beliefs confirmed, I learned, is having them disproved.”
“More than by circumstances, I think, my father was held back by memory-a childhood memory, painted in false colors by shame and guilt. The memory was so powerful that it isolated him from his fellow engineers, and from the upward thrust of success. He convicted himself of a crime: missing his father’s funeral. And too proud to see absolution through therapy, he stubbornly refused parole. “ -- I’ve observed this in a close family member who some of you will know, and once again, this passage cuts to my heart.

“Because I had not gone into a technical field, I thought he dismissed what I did. He never said ‘Good job’. He said ‘I would have done that differently’… Yet after his death, I found a sad thing among his possessions, a thing that could stand as an emblam of all our misunderstandings. It was a fat, yellowed, dog eared scrapbook of my articles, which, a stranger told me at his funeral, he had proudly and persistently inflicted on his friends. “ – This passage reminds me of the friend I discussed earlier. I do not know if her father has a similar scrapbook, but I do strongly suspect that he is very proud of her, nonetheless.
“I can’t wait to get there”. The last line of the book, discussing Opportunity landing on Mars. Me, either.

Thank you, M.G. for the ride. ( )