Reprinted with permission from Engineering Times

October Sky:  Yes, It Takes a Rocket Engineer

In 1957, years before Homer Hickam, Jr., ever became a distinguished engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or an established author, he was building rockets with his buddies in an attempt to escape a nowhere future as a miner in the dying town of Coalwood, West Virginia. At the age of 14, inspired by the Sputnik launch and Werner von Braun’s Cape Canaveral team, he began exploding and rebuilding rockets until he eventually captured the gold medal for his efforts at the 1960 National Science Fair. From then on, he continued to pursue his dream until he was helping to send up the big-time rockets.

Universal Pictures recently released the film October Sky, based on Hickam’s book Rocket Boys: A Memoir, which chronicles the true story of his high school days of rocket-building and his complex relationship with his mine-superintendent father. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickam and Laura Dern as a science teacher who encouraged him in building the "Big Creek Missile Agency."

The film is an inspirational tale that reminds youth that they can be anything they want to be—including an engineer. But Hickam wrote his fellow Big Creek High School alumni of another reason for telling the rocket boys’ story: "It was written for all of my generation who had parents who came out of the Depression and fought World War II and struggled from the day they were born. It was written for all of us who watched our parents sacrifice in a million ways every day so that we might have a better life and observed by deed every day how much our parents loved us but never experienced it through touch or word."

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