Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Homer Hickam, the Original Rocket Boy, Revisits His October Sky

Episode Date: October 1, 2007

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Rocket Boy Homer Hickam remembers an October sky, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. This week we mark the 50th anniversary of the Space Age. October 4, 1957. The Soviet Union announces to a stunned world that it has put the first human created object in orbit. And when Sputnik 1 passed over Homer Hickam's little mining town of Colwood, West Virginia, he instantly realized what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He would later document those days in his book, Rocket Boys, which in 1999 would

become a terrific movie called October Sky. We'll visit with Homer as he prepares for the October Sky Festival in his old hometown and hear how the rockets he built with his buddies led to years of work with NASA and space shuttle astronauts. Homer will also tell us about his latest literary projects. What happened to the Mars Global Surveyor? Emily Lakdawalla knows, and she'll tell all in this week's edition of Q&A. Shiver me timbers, space pirates hijack what's up, but we'll make sure you still get to hear about the night sky from Bruce Betts and learn who has won a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Just a few seconds to

spare for space headlines in this auspicious week. Dawn is on its way to Vesta and Ceres, those biggest of all asteroids. The spacecraft will be the first to orbit two heavenly bodies. You can read all about it at planetary.org, where there's also a great new detailed update on spirit and opportunity, back in business on Mars. Time for Emily. By the way, her blog at planetary.org settles once and for all the greatest question of our age. Which spacecraft has the biggest solar panels?

Size does matter, you know. I'll be right back with rocket boy Homer Hickam. which spacecraft has the biggest solar panels? Size does matter, you know. I'll be right back with rocket boy Homer Hickam. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, where is Mars Global Surveyor now? Mars Global Surveyor orbited Mars for more than nine years before falling silent on November 2, 2006. The cause of the failure was eventually traced back to a combination of human mistakes and the spacecraft's fault protection system incorrectly interpreting its own condition.

Because of these errors, the spacecraft turned so that one of its two main batteries was pointed directly at the sun. The battery overheated and failed. The remaining battery was not enough to maintain power to the spacecraft. Within 10 to 12 hours after the cascade of errors began, Mars Global Surveyor depleted the battery. It is now silent and unrecoverable. It was a tragic end to a spacecraft that had been a workhorse for NASA. Its originally two-year mission extended four times.

But it's still there at Mars. Nothing about the way it died would have caused any change to its orbit. Mars Global Surveyor still circles the planet once every two hours at an altitude of roughly 400 kilometers as a piece of Martian space junk, and it'll continue to do so for many decades at least. Just how long it stays aloft depends upon currently unknown characteristics

about the rise and fall of Mars' atmosphere. How many other defunct spacecraft still orbit Mars? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. Here's a bit of how Hollywood reinterpreted Homer Hickam's story about the Rocket Boys of Colwood, West Virginia, beginning on an October day in 1957, when the radio could not stop talking about the... ...Sputnik as it traverses the October sky. Did you see Sputnik over the other night?

Anywhere in the world, someone could look up and see exactly what I saw. To everyone else, it was just a light in the sky. Let them have outer space. We got rock and roll. But to Homer Hickam, it was the future. Sputnik is a milestone in history. And just maybe a way out. College scholarships for winning a science fair? I'm going to build a rocket.

Nine, eight. Should we keep behind something? What do you want to know about rockets? Everything. This spring, turn your eyes to the sky and watch what happens when everything you believe in soars. I think we got a chance. October Sky. That was a young Jake Gyllenhaal playing our guest, Homer Hickam. If you haven't seen October Sky, you should.

But save time to read the real story straight from Homer himself. His memoir, Rocket Boys, was about much more than a bunch of young guys in a mining town who decide to build rockets. Nevertheless, that's where our conversation on a recent morning began. Homer, we have so many guests that it is a pleasure to speak to. In this case, it's also an honor to speak to you. Welcome to Planetary Radio. Well, hello, Matt. How are you doing today? Very well, thank you.

A big time of year for you. It is. I always get asked from groups all around the country in October to come speak to them. I wonder why. It's actually quite a few communities and schools who read my memoir, Rocket Boys, or groups that have seen the movie October Sky. So yeah, it's understandable. This year, I'm a little bit more busy because we're headed right toward the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1, and that turns out to be a pretty big deal. Yeah, I would say so. And this is, in a way, our way of celebrating that, but from a uniquely American viewpoint, because really that was where so many things started for

you back there in Colwood. Well, it did. Let me just kind of set the stage a bit. Colwood, West Virginia, where I grew up, was a pure coal mining town. The company owned every house in the town and every store and every road, every fence, even owned a church. We were whatever religion the coal company said we would be. So we used to laugh and say we got the low bid religion you know whatever it was my dad was the coal mine superintendent

which meant he was sort of like the mayor of the town and also in charge of the only company in town my mom was just a unique individual she'd grown up in the coal fields too but she had greater aspirations for her husband and for her two sons. And I was one of those. My older brother, Jim, was a big football star, and I was kind of a puny little runt, real thick glasses. And I was a poor student. I had a passion for writing, but that was about it.

But when I was 14 years old and a sophomore at Big Creek High School, the Russians launched Sputnik 1. And my mom asked me about it, and I had read a lot of science fiction, so I explained to her what I thought an Earth satellite was and what it did. But I didn't have any idea that it would cause any change in my life until I read in the paper that Sputnik was going to fly over Colwood. And that was the biggest thing in the world right then. I mean, everybody was, it was the middle of the Cold War, and most Americans were terrified of the Russians getting ahead of us and moving into space before we did.

But I just thought it was kind of neat. So I told my mom I wanted to watch Sputnik fly over Colwood, and she told the neighbor lady who told the neighbor lady on down the row. And before I knew it, I guess there wasn't a whole lot to do in Colwood. It seemed like half the town was in the backyard, you know, to help me watch Sputnik fly over. And my dad came out in the yard and said, Elsie, my mom's name was Elsie, said, why are all these people in our backyard? And she said, well, they've come to watch,

or help Sonny, as I was called then, watch Sputnik fly over. And he said, well, they can all just go home because President Eisenhower would never allow anything Russian to fly over a coal well. And he put it on his head and went up to the coal mine. He didn't even look up once. Sputnik came along on schedule. And I want to tell you, you know, if it had been God himself in a golden chariot going across the sky that night, I would not have been more impressed. And I saw that, and I knew at that moment that somehow, some way, I wanted to be part of the movement into space.

And you became exactly that beginning, well, actually before 1981, but it was in 1981, I guess, that you went to the Marshall Space Flight Center where you spent about 17 years and worked with a lot of astronauts. I did. Yeah, I was 38 years old when worked with a lot of astronauts. I did. Yeah, I was 38 years old when I started to work for NASA. I went to Virginia Tech from Colwood and got an engineering degree, but like a lot of young men then, I was diverted to Vietnam. For the next six years after that, I was either getting ready for Vietnam,

I was in Vietnam, I was with the 4th Infantry Division, or I was recovering from Vietnam. There's a great picture of you during your service there on the website, homerhickam.com. On homerhickam.com, right. And so when I came back, I wanted to work for NASA, but the Apollo program was winding down. So they were firing engineers, not hiring. So I ended up as a civilian going to work for the Army Missile Command, which I did for a number of years. But I kept applying to NASA, and then in 1981 I was accepted. I became at first a spacecraft designer. I helped design the space lab.

It was a canister laboratory that went in the shuttle cargo bay. And then I was a scuba instructor on the side, and I was working in the neutral buoyancy simulator with astronauts. And they said, well, we need to have somebody that can train these astronauts to work back in the space lab. And I raised my hand and said, I can do that. So that's how I became an astronaut training manager and worked with astronauts around the world, trained the first Japanese astronauts, helped train the first Hubble Space Telescope repair crew. So I had a wonderful career with NASA. And we should remind the few of our listeners who don't know, the neutral buoyancy simulator is that big pool, right, in Houston?

Well, it was the big pool in Huntsville. Oh, sorry. Huntsville was where it was pioneered. We had the tank for some decades before the neutral buoyancy lab down in Houston worked, but now the neutral buoyancy simulator in Huntsville is closed, and all of that extra vehicular activity type of simulation is done down in Houston. Back to your days in Colwood that are not just memorialized but documented so extremely well in that wonderful movie, October Sky. Well, first of all, who thought of that anagram, October Sky?

I'm always quick to say, hey, you know, the book is better. But I love the movie. Don't get me wrong. I spent most of the filming days on set. I was hired as a technical advisor, and I hung out mostly with the Teamsters and the special effects guys and kind of kept Jake Gyllenhaal in line, who played me in the movie. Actually, the director of the movie, Joe Johnston, came up with the anagram. They wanted to call it Rocket Boys, like the book, but a pretty bad movie called Rocket Man came out that summer, right before they were going to release Rocket Boys, so they decided we've got to change the name.

And Joe had a new computer that had some anagram software in it, and he plugged in Rocket Boys, and the only anagram of Rocket Boys that makes any sense is October Sky. He had just edited the scene where we looked up, you know, everybody in Colwood in my backyard and saw Sputnik fly over through the October sky. And he said, well, now that's way cosmic. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. And he called the producer, Chuck Gordon, and Chuck said, that is way cosmic, but I better check with my psychic to be sure. And the psychic said, well, well, Mon, that is way cosmic, but the author, Homer Hickam, has to agree to this or it won't work.

So they called me and told me, and I said, I hate that name. I won't have anything to do with a movie called October Sky. And they said, great, we knew you'd love it, which is about how they paid attention. That's Hollywood. Anything I said about that movie. Yeah, there's Hollywood for you, I guess. That's Hollywood. Homer Hickam, the original Rocket Boy, will have more for us after a break.

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Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're marking the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the space age with Homer Hickam, author of many books, including his memoir called Rocket Boys. It became the 1999 feature film October Sky. It certainly became, I wouldn't use this word often, but a lovely movie. And my

impression is certainly from the book and from what else, other things that I've learned about you, that it was much more true to life than a lot of movies that claim to be that way. Well, it certainly has the same heart. Like any author, I have quibbles with a movie based on my book. And it's also, of course, about my life and my family and so on. But I love the movie. It tells a slightly different story than the book. But movies only have a couple hours to tell a story where

a book's a little bit more leisurely. So I've come to terms with the movie. I've learned to, I can't really, I have trouble sitting through it because I've seen it too many times. The people who made that movie did it with heart, and they believed in it, and therefore I think that's why it is lovely and why it's still so very popular. You talk on your website about this whole story having been about reconciliation, and the part that your father plays in that is pretty critical. Yeah, ultimately that's exactly what this book is about. The strongest thread in the book is the father-son relationship. My father was a very complicated man.

He was a great engineer, although he didn't have a college degree. He was probably one of the best mining engineers in the country. And he believed in Colwood. He believed in the Colwood philosophy of life, that we're proud of who we are, we stand up for what we believe, we keep our families together, and we trust in God, but rely on ourselves. And he thought the way of life in Colwood was the best way to live. But he never had much time for me. It's mostly he doted on my older brother, who was a football star, like maybe my dad wished that he could have been.

The strong thread throughout the book is how, as I and the other rocket boys start building these rockets and they get more and more sophisticated, my father gradually realizes that perhaps I might be able to come back as an engineer and take his place as the superintendent of the mine. And he could pay my way through college, but at that time he was unwilling to do so because he didn't think I was smart enough to do it. And the rockets changed his mind. And ultimately, I aimed this whole book to the final scene where after winning the National Science Fair gold medal, we came back and launched our final rockets. And the last rocket went over six miles high. And my dad, for the first time ever, came down to see one of our rockets launched,

and we let him launch it. And he got so excited. He got so excited because he had black lung, he had trouble breathing. In the movie, they show him putting his arm around me. In fact, I put my arm around him, and he let me. And at that moment, we reconciled. All of the pain and indifference of the years were just wiped away, and so I was very fortunate to have that moment.

We just have a couple of minutes left. Tell us a bit about the October Sky Festival starting later this week. Oh, yeah. The October Sky Festival is an annual event in Colwood. This year it's the ninth annual October Sky Festival. We're going to have Bill Reedy, an astronaut, a friend of mine, come down. He's flown three times into space, and he's going to come down and be there all day. And also Scott Miles, who played my older brother Jim in the movie. And we'll have a lot of the real people in the movie and the book walking around. The machinist that actually built our rockets in the old Colwood machine shop will be there.

The other Rocket Boys, there were actually six of us. Four of us will be there that day. I'll be there. Roy Lee, Odell, and Billy Rose will be there. And so it's going to be a great day. And you can go on homerhickam.com and click on where it says Rocket Boys slash October Sky, and there will be all the information about it, how to get there, and everything else. We've got busloads of students coming from all across the country and all kinds of people, and it should be a great day.

Man, I wish I could be there. I do, too. Well, maybe another year, but you know what? On the 50th anniversary, but also, talk about cosmic coincidences like that anagram. You've got the International Space Station flying over on the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch. Yeah, I looked it up, and thanks to NASA and the Russian Space Agency and the laws of physics, the International Space Station is going to fly over Colwood on October the 4th, which is actually the 50th anniversary of Sputnik the 5th and the 6th,

which is the October Sky Festival. So as long as we have clear skies, that should be a wonderful show for all of us. We saved a minute here to let you talk about that other part of your life that's been there all along, the writer. You've got a book out and life that's been there all along, the writer. You've got a book out and another one coming in February. Well, I do. Now, one book that your fans would be interested in is Back to the Moon, and that was my first novel that came out right after Rocket Boys.

Right now I'm writing a series of novels set during World War II. The Far Reaches just came out in June, did really well. And in February, the new book is called Red Helmet, and it's a very romantic novel set in today's West Virginia coal fields. I'm pioneering a new genre. I'm calling it coal mining chick lit. It's got a great cover, I'll tell you that. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, it's a pretty girl, isn't it? Yes, it is. One other dimension, at least. You're working with Anushh Ansari on her memoir, First Woman to be a Private Astronaut, a Space Tourist. That's right. A lovely Iranian-American woman, Anousheh Ansari, paid the Russians to let her fly up to the International Space Station,

did a wonderful job while she was up there. She has a fascinating story. Came over here when she was 16 years old, did not speak a word of English, flash forward 15 years, and she's worth almost a billion dollars. So she asked me to help her write her memoir, and I said, well, I couldn't think of anybody that I'd rather help than Anusha. So she's a great lady, and we look forward to that book coming out next year. Homer, we're out of time. Thank you again so much for joining us on Planetary Radio and I look forward to joining you at the October Sky Festival one of these years.

Well, wonderful, Matt. You would be absolutely welcome and I think you'd love it. Homer Hickam. You probably know him as the lead character in that terrific movie, October Sky, but he is also the successful author of both fiction and nonfiction, as you have heard. Former NASA engineer, still lives in Huntsville, where he contributed so much to this country's space program in the 80s and 90s. And it all started on that day, almost exactly 50 years ago, with that little

spacecraft flying over his head as he stood there in Colwood. We'll be right back with Bruce Betts in this week's edition of What's Up after this return visit by Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Other than Mars Global Surveyor, how many defunct spacecraft are still in orbit at Mars? Of course, it's impossible to know for sure, because defunct spacecraft, by definition, are no longer transmitting their positions to Earth, and we have no telescopes capable of spotting dead satellites in Mars orbit.

There are seven other spacecraft that could still be in orbit at Mars. Viking 1 and 2, Mariner 9, Mars 2, Mars 3 and Mars 5, and Phobos 2. Computer simulations of the last known orbits of these spacecraft, coupled with models of the Martian atmosphere, should tell us whether these objects are likely still in orbit or if they have crashed to the ground. However, according to Mark Adler, who is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's chief mission concept architect, it seems that no one has done these calculations. So the answer is that no one knows or can even guess where most of these spacecraft are.

Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary dot org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Michael Kuda here, and I'm standing here with Andre Barmanis. Good evening. And it must be time for What's Up? Well, what's up this evening is Jupiter. Jupiter is quite prominent in the western sky.

Hey, hey, hey, guys! Hey, get away from the microphone! We said you could hold it. We'll take over from here. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much. Go beam yourself back to Hollywood. Live long and prosper, guys. Yeah. Okuda and Bormannis. The famous comedy team.

They're on the list, too, now. Yeah. Yeah, you guys are on the list. We're still listening. Oh. I thought they were gone. I did, too. What's up in the night sky?

Well, you know, there's stuff in the night sky. Do you want to make any mention of who these people were who stole our microphone? We'll do it at the end. All right, we'll come back to it. Up in the night sky, we've got, as that other guy was saying, we've got Jupiter looking lovely and bright in the evening in the west after sunset. Check it out. It will be going away over the next couple months, so check it out now. In the pre-dawn sky, we've got Venus as the brightest star-like object up in the east.

Extremely bright. Can't miss it. And if you look below Venus, you can start seeing Saturn, which also looks like a bright star but much dimmer. And on October 15th, they will be nuzzling next to each other in the pre-dawn sky. And then Saturn, relative to Venus, will move up higher. And in the middle of the night, we've got Mars rising in the east, and it's up high by pre-dawn. And looking kind of reddish and getting gradually brighter and brighter through its opposition coming up in late December. Great.

We should tell people why there's karaoke going on in the background. Just because. We decided Institute is a new segment of the show, trying to brighten things up. Either that or we were having a lovely dinner. Now, we're at the semi-official Planetary Society restaurant in downtown Pasadena, Burger Continental. Well, hopefully they'll give us a discount now. But yes, organizing meeting for talking about Planet Fest coming up for the Phoenix landing,

May 25th, starting to do some organization, getting some of our people we thought were friends of the society, like Michael Okuda and Andre Bormanis. Oh, them? Yeah, coming to help us out with the thinking. You mean the guy who designed Star Trek and then the guy who kept them accurate and produced Enterprise and all that?

Yeah, those guys. Okay. What else have you got for us? I've got random space fact! That frightened him away. Did you know that to get one kilogram to the surface of the moon, you need to get 16 kilograms into low Earth orbit?

That's some kind of law of nature? What are you talking about? Why would that be the case? What if I had a space elevator to get me into low Earth orbit? Yeah, okay. Yes, this makes a variety of assumptions based on standard methods that we've actually used successfully to get into low Earth orbit. As opposed to fantasies.

As opposed to low Earth orbit. Yes, we could also beam the mass to the moon, and it would take a lot less mass, or a lot less effort. But no, it's a ballpark figure. You're supposed to just go with the concept here. It's a lot harder to get stuff to the surface of the moon than to low Earth orbit. I know, it should be obvious, but gosh, hard audience. All right, go on to the trivia contest. Okay, I'll go on to the trivia contest. We asked you, where in the solar system is Hesperia Planum? How'd we do, Matt? You know, I don't know what's going on, but we're getting more entries

than we've ever had before. But still, lots of people coming in with the right answer. I think everybody got it right this time. Mars. That's where Hesperia Planum is. And a lot of people thought, you know, that's not that difficult. John Leis tried to make it a little more interesting by telling us where it is in terms of latitude and longitude on Mars. But that doesn't really work because there's the planetographic coordinate system and the planetocentric coordinate system. And I guess they're at odds with each other.

So he said he just goes out and points. Yeah, well, no, everyone agrees where Hesperia Planum is. What varies is the classic challenge on Mars or Earth. Which way is east? Do you do east longitude or west longitude? So that's really the difference. So if you can do the proper subtraction, one can convert. But it's a big area, and another little tidbit about it,

a little space fact, is it's the name of the middle geologic unit on Mars is named after Hesperia planum, the Hesperian. And I was also told that it's actually named after Hesperia Planum, the Hesperian. And I was also told that it's actually named after Hesperia, California. Yes, that is entirely accurate. Sure. Well, that's what a listener said, but

probably it's Hesperia on Mars is a more interesting place to visit. You want to know who actually won? Craig Jernay won. He's been waiting a long time for this. Congratulations, Craig. He says, sure enough, Hesperia Planum is up there on Mars, and that's won him a Planetary Radio t-shirt. All right, well, if you'd like to win your own Planetary Radio t-shirt,

answer the following question. We're going to go to the constellations. What's the brightest star in Cygnus the Swan? Brightest star in Cygnus the Swan? Brightest star in Cygnus the Swan? Andre's got his arm up. Hey, hey, quiet, quiet. You can enter the contest, but... Tell Andre how to enter.

Hey, Andre, go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to get us your entry. And when does Andre need to get that in by? Well, Andre, be sure to get that to us by October 8th. Monday, October 8th. He's putting it on his iPhone right now at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Are we done? We are. All right, everyone go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about strange phones that turn red when you tip them sideways. Thank you, and good night.

He's Bruce Betts. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us each week here for What's Up when we don't have Star Trek interlopers. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Less than two months to go till our fifth anniversary, and we're going to celebrate. Stay tuned. Have a great week. Thank you.