Meet Allison Schroeder, the NASA-loving writer of ‘Hidden Figures’ who was just nominated for an Oscar

Allison Schroeder was on the playground in 1986, chasing a friend around the slide, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. As a first-grader, she was confused by the blast visible from her neighborhood, just 30 minutes south of the launch pad in Cape Canaveral. So she looked toward her teacher, who’d begun to cry. That’s when…