'Quentin andI were determined to build a perfect rocket, whichthey defined as a rocket that did precisely what it was designed to do. 'In this, I was joined by Quentin and the other Rocket Boys, but mostly Quentin who taught me a crude form of the scientific method he called 'body of knowledge'.' 'Eventually, I did it because I realized I had a need to learn things that seemed hidden from me,' he says. Hickam says his passion to learn how to make rockets fly began because it was fun but later became a way that he thought might get attention from his father.
I've lost count of the engineers who've told us they wouldn't have been engineers had they not seen the movie or read the book.'
'Even 13 years later,' Hickam says, 'we receive letters and e-mails every day from people all around the world who tell us how much they love the movie October Sky as well as Rocket Boys, the book the movie was based on. By the end, he's won the National Science Fair with his friends. It's a film that tells the story of a teenager in a small coal mining town in West Virginia who has little chance to escape the mines-until he finds a love and ability for rocketry. I know where I was when I saw it-on an airplane, watching grown men cry. As Homer Hickam and I start working on this article, it's not all that far from 13 years to the day that October Sky premiered.
