Summer time House Studying Listing: Don’t Blow Your self Up

I’m consistently studying area books and have often reviewed them right here, in my science column at Forbes. I’ve determined to launch a sequence of evaluations that may construct a Summer time 2022 House Studying Listing composed of works by pals of mine within the area group.

Don’t Blow Your self Up – Homer Hickam (Put up Hill Press, 2021)

Favourite quote from this e-book: Anyway, being on an airplane that was on hearth gave the impression to be nearly what I ought to have anticipated at that juncture in my life.

Don’t Blow Your self Up: The Additional True Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky Hickam, Homer (Put up Hill Press, 2022. Kindle Version).

Homer Hickam is my favourite “all objective” writer since Isaac Asimov. Asimov impressed my enthusiasm for area, science and expertise in sixth grade and remained my loyal companion for a few years. I notably loved his autobiographies. Being lengthy lived and prolific, the Good Physician produced three life tales.

With Don’t Blow Your self Up, Homer has exceeded Asimov’s autobiography rely. Hickam’s simple prose, dry wit, and talent to transition between fiction and non-fiction at will channel the perfect works of Asimov. It was after all, Rocket Boys (aka October Sky), that propelled Homer to fame. This 1989 autobiographical work particulars Sonny’s (Hickam) coming of age in rural West Virginia and his self-taught makes an attempt at rocketry which captured a gold medal from the US Nationwide Science Honest competitors for Homer and his crew. Rocket Boys was a success in print in addition to within the profitable 1999 movie adaptation, October Sky. (Observe to nerds: “October Sky” is an anagram of “Rocket Boys”) Homer backed up the Rocket Boys story in 2000 with, The Coalwood Means, a e-book that particulars contemporaneous occasions not coated within the first e-book. 2002’s Sky of Stone continues the story with Sonny coming back from faculty to work the coal mine throughout a summer time.

The large (416 pages) and masterful, Don’t Blow Your self Up leaps forward and takes us by way of a lot of the writer’s grownup life, beginning along with his time as a pupil at Virginia Tech, persevering with by way of his navy service in Vietnam, his journey adventures, and the event of his profession as an writer. These totally different threads weave themselves collectively in a fancy narrative that explains the Homer Hickam many people within the area group have come to like and admire. As a author who additionally crosses genres, I’m intrigued by Homer’s development. He goes from writing for SCUBA magazines, to publishing a navy historical past e-book on German U-boat actions off the US East Coast to wonderful fiction that mixes these a lot of issues.

I’ve all the time been a sucker for struggle and navy profession tales. Don’t Blow Your self Up provides a load of harrowing and enjoyable Military anecdotes. Homer’s description of pressured marches, beatings, meals denial and psychological torture in Officer Candidate Faculty might be an awesome prisoner of struggle tales if it hadn’t have taken place by the hands of his personal authorities! He writes, “It was not hyperbole to say the dearth of diet, the fixed harassment, and the dearth of sleep left most of us failing bodily and mentally.” The upperclassmen Homer described might be convicted of struggle crimes!

Though we by no means appear to search out the chance to hang around collectively, Homer and I share quite a few experiences and views. I deeply worth his insights and even his occasional assist (he offered a fantastic letter to the US Senate in assist of my affirmation for NASA CFO in 2020). We every had the consideration of working for the area company at totally different locations in several occasions (Homer for for much longer than I).

Homer and I additionally share a ardour for SCUBA. Homer’s NASA profession at Alabama’s Marshall Spaceflight Heart included coaching astronauts within the impartial buoyancy tank, a pool used to simulate spacewalks. He helped practice Ellison Onizuka of the ill-fated House Shuttle Challenger crew. Usually, Homer used that second to flirt with a poolside Christine McAuliffe, failing to lure her into the water. He additionally helped to arrange the staff the repaired the preliminary flaws with the Hubble House Telescope and Japan’s first astronaut. Homer and I share a selected fondness for diving within the Bay Islands of Honduras and his tales of flying historic DC-3s to the distant island of Guanaja jogged my memory of my very own adventures in attending to that beautiful diving vacation spot. Homer tells it higher,

The chickens obtained down from their homeowners and strutted up and down the aisle after which the pig obtained free and scrambled round in one thing of a panic. Maybe considering I used to be its proprietor, it jumped in my lap however when it appeared up at me, it was clearly horrified and ran away. I quickly heard its proprietor speaking to it in a consoling method and a lady, both the person’s spouse or girlfriend, obtained up and patted the pig and likewise talked to it. I wasn’t positive if it was a pet or a future meal, however the couple appeared to find it irresistible and it them.

Homer and I strongly agree on the significance of creating a everlasting human presence on the Moon. Whereas speaking in regards to the Moon was virtually forbidden at NASA in the course of the area shuttle interval, Homer intuitively understood the underlying financial drivers behind lunar settlement. He writes,

As a result of I feel the moon is the perfect place to go if persons are going to truly stay in area. Not simply astronauts however all people. There’s work to do on the moon, blue collar type of work. For one factor, we may simply go up there and mine the blame factor.

At one level, Homer hoped to safe a visit to the South Pole in assist of Antarctic analysis for lunar analog environments. His bosses at Marshall rejected it however Homer pursued his work and produced a paper for the NSF on the subject. He writes,

I had carried out what I may for the moon and so went on to different issues. Time must move for NASA to catch up. When it did, a highway map was there, proper the place I left it.

Years later, I used to be happy to make use of my place as a member of the 2016 NASA Company Overview Workforce to assist advance a brand new return to the Moon and the institution of a everlasting human presence there. Thanks, Homer Hickam, on your inspiration and fervour on this and so many different matters.

You should buy Homer’s books on his private web site or from Amazon or Barnes and Nobel. Let me additionally recommend you comply with Homer on Twitter at @realhomerhickam; he’s a number of enjoyable there and often engages along with his followers and area fans.