THE HOPE IN A ROCKET
October Sky is a great movie. It is based on the autobiography of former NASA science engineer Homer Hickam, Jr. It is about four boys who embody the hope of a community.
It’s 1957 in Coalwood, West Virginia where all the boys grow up to be coal miners. Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) has no reason to think he’ll be any different. Even the public school furnishes no other vision beyond the town’s coal mine.
Too small to earn a football scholarship, Homer has no way out of his predetermined life -- until the soviet satellite Sputnik flies over the October sky and changes everything. As Homer watches the satellite cross the evening sky he has one of those life changing ’eternal moments’ and Homer’s world gets a lot bigger.
Though his father is the mine superintendent and has no greater wish than to see his sons follow in his footsteps, Homer embarks on a mission to build and launch his own homemade
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