However, when astronauts would write and tell me how much the movie meant to them, as ungracious as it sounds, I ask them if they read the book! The book is different form the movie. HH: Shuttle astronauts used to watch it before their flight, which I thought were pretty cool, especially since I was the training manager for science flights, especially for Spacelab flights and I set up the curriculum for International Space station shuttle flights. UT: What parts of Rocket Boys/October Sky being so successful has meant the most to you, personally? Rare footage of Homer Hickam and zincoshine-propelled Auk rocket: But I am grateful for Rocket Boys and its success and I wouldn’t change a thing. So, especially when you’ve written about your life, you tend to get pigeonholed into that. I’ve tried to kill it several times but I can’t – people come up to me and say “I love your books!” and I ask which one – and usually they say, “Oh, you’ve written more than Rocket Boys?” The story kind of hit at the right time – in 1998 the world was desperate for a story like that. Rocket Boys was a phenomenon that I didn’t really realize how popular it was going to be and neither did the publisher. But the truth is, it once you become a published author, you realize the odds of getting your book made into a movie are pretty slim – there are many more books coming out than movies being made, or musicals for that matter. HH: No, or a movie either! When you are a new writer, you think, all I have to do is get published and everyone is going to love what you’re saying and a movie will be next.
UT: Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine that one of your books would be made into a musical? I had day jobs that I really loved, but I also allowed myself to go out and do some dangerous stuff, and also do research and turned that into a writing career. But I also wanted to have some security in my life, and I have to say I’ve done both of those.
When I came back from Vietnam I made up my mind that I wanted to live a life of adventure.
I was always open to doing many different things. The way I looked at NASA was that it was an agency that was doing something adventurous and moving us outward into space, and what could be more fun than working with an outfit like that! But I didn’t know that Vietnam would come along and distract me and my generation for quite some time. If it hadn’t been for Sputnik, I probably would have ended up as an English professor! I had to work really hard to become an engineer. And they knew I had some writing capabilities. HH: My early teachers were pretty sure I was going to be a writer because I had no inclination towards math and science at all.
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