It's based on the "untold true story", which remains untold because this movie is bullshit.
Besides the three black women, all of the main characters are fabricated. All of the dramatic events are fabricated.
I'm 95% certain there is an homage to Saul Alinsky. The first person to really be nice to any of the black ladies is an old jewish man they call "Salinsky" or "Zalinsky". The fabricated character's official name in the script is Karl Zalienski. He serves as a sort of a wise grandfatherly figure in the background of the plot.
The movie starts off with "Based on a true story". It ends the movie with historical pictures of the black ladies, but in black & white so you can't discern the actual skin tone. It really leaves the impression that the movie is an accurate depiction of historical events.
In the movie, the only reason astronaut John Glenn is able to make it back to Earth alive is because of the main black lady's calculations and expertise. The only way NASA can figure out how to use their new IBM mainframe is because another black lady figures it out after visiting the library. She teaches a team of white IBM engineers how their own cutting-edge new mainframe computer works. Throughout the film, a white engineer (a fabricated character) tries to steal credit for the black lady's calculations and is jealous of her brilliancy. Pretty much all the white people are hateful and racist for most of the film, except for the head NASA guy (also a fabricated character). They 'redeem' all the white people in the end by having them all learn to respect the black ladies because of how brilliant they are.
When the film ended, all the white people in the theater seemed compelled to assert how good of a movie it was, but I could tell in the back of their minds they knew something wasn't right. All of the black people were giddy as fuck and seemed a little cocky afterward. There was a black couple sitting behind me – the man sounded like an alcoholic with a 3rd grade education. Afterward, the upperclass older white couple sitting near them felt the need to tell the black folks how good of a movie it was, and dare I say they sounded slightly obsequious in doing so.
Here are the historical black ladies:
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The movie:
en.wikipedia.org
Interesting article:
vdare.com
This movie needs to be exposed far and wide. It instills guilt complexes in whites, instills victim complexes in blacks (and to a lesser degree, women), and it gives a false sense of pride to blacks for having been responsible for the success of the 1960s space program. It's an attempt rewrite history and reassign credit for an accomplishment. It is a disgrace. Barron, I hope you're reading this.