Previously published in paperback as October Sky.Three years in the life of Homer ‘Sonny’ Hickam, from the moment he sees the Sputnik satellite overhead in West Virginia to his successful launch of a prizewinning rocket.In 1957, Coalwood, West Virginia, was a town the post-war boom never quite reached, and dominated by the black steel towers of the mine. For fourteen-year-old Homer ‘Sonny’ Hickam there are only two routes in life: a college football scholarship, or a life underground. But from the moment the town turns out to watch the world’s first space satellite, Sputnik, as it passes overhead, Sonny and his friends embark on a mission of their own – to form the Big Creek Missile Agency, and build a rocket.Looking back after a distinguished career as a NASA engineer, Homer Hickam tells the warm, vivid story of youth and ambition that inspired the 1999 film October Sky. It is the tale of a group of teenage boys who dared to imagine a life beyond the confines of the coal pit, and went on to design, build and launch the rockets that would change their lives, and their town, forever.
Оглавление
Homer Hickam. Rocket Boys
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
AUTHOR’S NOTE
1. COALWOOD
2. SPUTNIK
3. MOM
4. THE FOOTBALL FATHERS
5. QUENTIN
6. MR. BYKOVSKI. Auks I–IV
7. CAPE COALWOOD
8. CONSTRUCTION OF THE CAPE
9. JAKE MOSBY. Auks V–VIII
10. MISS RILEY. Auks IX–XI
11. ROCKET CANDY. Auks XII–XIII
12. THE MACHINISTS. Auks XIV–XV
13. THE ROCKET BOOK
14. THE PILLAR EXPLOSION. Auks XVI–XIX
15. THE STATE TROOPERS
16. A NATURAL ARROGANCE. Auk XX
17. VALENTINE
18. THE BUMP
19. PICKING UP AND GOING ON. Auk XXI
20. O’DELL’S TREASURE
21. ZINCOSHINE. Auks XXII, A, B, C, and D
22. WE DO THE MATH. Auks XXIII–XXIV
23. SCIENCE FAIRS. Auk XXV
24. A SUIT FOR INDIANAPOLIS
25. THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FAIR
26. ALL SYSTEMS GO. Auks XXVI–XXXI. June 4, 1960
EPILOGUE
Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam
About the Author
Also by Homer Hickam
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
To Mom and Dad
And the people of Coalwood
—Dr. Wernher von Braun
.....
Dad remained silent at the table, but I noticed he and Jim exchanged a look of what I took to be agreement about the shame of me being in the band. I looked over at Mom for support, but she was looking through the window behind me. I supposed there were birds at her feeder. I thought to myself, I like the uniform and I like playing the snare drum. And Dorothy Plunk’s in the band too. That last thought made me give Jim a smug look that confused him no end.
ALL that fall, the Welch Daily News and the Bluefield Daily Telegraph were filled with stories of our American scientists and engineers at Cape Canaveral in Florida, desperately working to catch up with the Russians. It was as if the science fiction I had read all my life were coming true. Gradually, I became fascinated by the whole thing. I read every article I could find about the men at the Cape and kept myself pinned to the television set for the latest on what they were doing. I began to hear about one particular rocket scientist named Dr. Wernher von Braun. His very name was exotic and exciting. I saw on television where Dr. von Braun had given an interview and he said, in a crisp German accent, that if he got the go-ahead he could put a satellite into orbit within thirty days. The newspapers said he’d have to wait, that the program called Vanguard would get the first chance. Vanguard was the United States’s International Geophysical Year satellite program, and von Braun, since he worked for the Army, was somehow too tainted by that association to make the first American try for orbit. At night before I went to sleep, I thought about what Dr. von Braun might be doing at that very moment down at the Cape. I could just imagine him high on a gantry, lying on his back like Michelangelo, working with a wrench on the fuel lines of one of his rockets. I started to think about what an adventure it would be to work for him, helping him to build rockets and launching them into space. For all I knew, a man with that much conviction might even form an expedition into space, like Lewis and Clark. Either way, I wanted to be with him. I knew to do that I’d have to prepare myself in some way, get some skills of some kind or special knowledge about something. I was kind of vague on what it would be, but I could at least see I would need to be like the heroes in my books—brave and knowing more than the next man. I was starting to see myself past Coalwood. Wernher von Braun. Dorothy Plunk. My song now had two names in it.
