Difficult to read at times because it deals very directly with the double-binds facing women (and making an effort to include all women) in the culture, this is more a work of sociological science fiction than anything else. There's lots of good stuff about rockets and physics! But the alternate history aspects hinge as much on the shock to a culture on the brink of the cold war and the aggressive, history-blind conformity of the fifties suddenly being thrown off that trajectory.