The story of space travel according to history has traditionally been depicted by white male astronauts and scientists who are portrayed to have done the impossible. With the glitz and glamor of them all, little is known about what really happens behind the limelight, what is the story of the people who are supporting the stars and what are the relevance and great significance of the roles of the people behind.

Hidden Figures movie, based on the book written by Margot Lee Shetterly, was released for a limited time for the holiday season and a kind of story that goes deep beneath the surface of space travel, a story of three African-American women who were the pillars on assisting the launch of the first American into space by NASA.

Set in the time before the 1962 Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, the feature focuses on Katherine Johnson, a genius in mathematics, who has a crucial role in flight trajectory calculation for NASA; Dorothy Vaughan, The leader of the West Area Computers Division; and Mary Jackson, The first female engineer at NASA. The trio was supported by a division of "human computers", which are a group of African-American women, to calculate complex equations before the time of the digital age and computers.

NASA prides itself as a pioneer for racial diversity during the era of civil rights conflict in the United States, but that does not equate to an easy life for the African-American employees. The division where the movie was based on was then completely racially segregated, to the point of dining areas and bathroom segregation.

In a timely manner, the movie faces the issues of racial equality directly. The treatment was then received by African-American people in the small sense, in the cases of taking breaks in the staff rooms, getting coffee from the machine and all the small parts of daily life that were a racial encounter for them.

The issues tackled are not new to the watching public and frankly quite familiar, it is not difficult to find the significance of the conflicts tackled in the movie and what is happening today in our world. The challenges faced by the characters in the movie is the sort of casual discrimination that people of a different race still encounters today.

The movie, Hidden Figures, has some familiar issues from the usual biopics. The movie may go very emotional then goes quickly to moments from history. But the movie brings light to the importance of its content, How NASA or even America as a whole is in debt to the group of the African-American women where the story was based on.

The movie reminds us even in a dire and weary racial situation, people, regardless of race and color, can overcome challenges and problems if are under a common, may it be impossible, goal. In a world that is growing more divisive, the moral of the movie is worth keeping.