ROCKET GIRL, stage play script. The year is 1957. The Cold War. An undeclared Space Race. The United States and the Soviet Union are locked in a battle to see which country will be the first to place a satellite into orbit. The stakes are high. International prestige, national pride, and the control of a host of emerging technologies are on the line. As America's Vanguard rocket proves itself a disastrous failure, and word leaks out that the Soviets are close to making their first orbital attempt, U.S. politicians have no choice but to abandon the Vanguard program and plead for help. Hat-in-hand, they recruit German expatriate Wernher von Braun. But when von Braun realizes that his rocket, the Redstone/Jupiter C, will not be powerful enough to reach orbit, he seeks out the help of a young woman in California who may hold the key to putting America back in the race. Born on a small farm in Ray, North Dakota, and recruited as a wartime chemist for the U.S. Government after only one year of college, Mary Sherman Morgan suddenly finds herself at the center of a political and technological maelstrom. Rocket Girl is the heretofore untold story of how a poor farm girl with only a high school diploma not only rose to become America's first female rocket scientist, but provided the crucial technology that launched America into the Age of Space.