Homer Hickam Quotes
A rocket won't fly unless somebody lights the fuse!
Hickam, Homer. Rocket Boys. Delacorte Press, 1998, p. 211.
Brown wanted Douglass to join his band of 22 men for the raid on Harper's Ferry. Douglass not only refused to join but tried to dissuade Brown from carrying out the raid.
The backward countdown of the rocket launch was first thought of by Lang and used in the film to be more exciting. Then the rocked scientists and engineers adapted it, and it has become stanard procesdure for launches of space vehicles and sattelite.
Homer Hadley Hickam Jr. is an American author, Vietnam War veteran, and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts. His 1998 memoir Rocket Boys (also published as October Sky) was a New York Times Best Seller and was the basis for the 1999 film October Sky. Hickam's body of written work also includes several additional best-selling memoirs and novels, including the "Josh Thurlow" historical fiction novels and his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator. His books have been translated into many languages.