The specific calculation that cannot be made is: how much more technically influential might she have been if she had entered the field at twenty-four instead of thirty-four?

If she had been formally credentialed from the beginning of her aerospace work rather than seven years into it?

If the institutional structures that surrounded her had been designed to recognize and support someone like her from the start?

The answer to that question is unknowable.

But the question itself is worth asking because it points to something that the story of Mary Ross makes visible: the loss that results when institutional barriers prevent talented people from reaching the work they are most capable of.

That loss is not only experienced by the individuals who are barred — it is experienced by the fields that do not get the benefit of their contributions.