Pushing boundaries

Brennecke published several scientific papers during her time at NASA, and her supervisor recommended her for an award from the Society of Women Engineers for her “outstanding accomplishments vital to the success and timeliness of the Saturn Space Vehicle and other NASA programs.”







Still, Brennecke didn’t recall everyone being so supportive of her accomplishments. “I had to work twice as hard,” she said during her oral history interview, “particularly when either of my immediate supervisors would interfere with what I was trying to do. They would give me an assignment and the next thing you know, they were playing some kind of a trick. You learn there is such a thing as survival. You learn how to go around or up or down.”







She recalled a specific instance when a higher-up attempted to change her official job description from physical metallurgist to physicist. “This might sound stupid,” she said, “but he basically wanted to eliminate a position. By making me a physicist, [he tried to imply] I did not belong there and I sure as hell did not want to be a physicist.” She went over his head, “doing what you are never supposed to do,” as she put it, and told the top boss. Her title as metallurgist remained.







She credits her nickname to smoothing the way much of the time. “Hap,” she pointed out, “does not give you any clue to ‘he’ or ‘she.’” But her coworkers, searching for a middle ground between the courtesy of the times and the informality of the shop, tended to call her Ms. Hap. It turned into a joke, with her hardhat reading MISHAP. “It was not appreciated by the safety inspector. He did not think that was funny at all,” she said, laughing herself.







As the Apollo and Saturn programs wound down, Brennecke remained with NASA. She transferred to selecting materials and techniques for Spacelab and the Space Shuttle’s booster rockets, ushering in the next era of NASA’s human space exploration. Brennecke died in 2008.