The Calculating Stars

On a spring night in 1952, a meteorite strikes the east coast of the United States and destroys Washington, DC along with much of the seaboard. The impact will alter the climate so badly that Earth becomes unfit for people, just as happened to the dinosaurs.

Elma York is a former WASP pilot and a mathematician. Those skills win her a place with the International Aerospace Coalition, which is racing to put people on the moon and then settle space. Her post is computer.

The program needs far more people than before, and Elma sees plenty of women with flying and scientific records as strong as the men's. She starts to ask why none of them are allowed to go up. Her wish to become the first Lady Astronaut grows into a fight with the social conventions of the era, and those conventions may lose.

Alternate history set in the early space race, with a disaster that supplies the deadline. The story follows one determined woman inside a large institution, so the tension comes from the countdown for humanity and from the resistance she meets at work.