Rocket Boys Review
When I purchased the book “Rocket Boys” a few months ago at a meeting where author Homer Hickam was signing books, I had no real intentions of reading it. I bought it more for posterity; to add to my collection. I even had the inscription dedicated to Finn, thinking some day it could be his book, a little piece of history relevant to the space program with ties to our hometown, etc.
But a few weeks after that, the movie based on the book, “October Sky,” was on television and there was this certain part that showed the young Homer Hickam briefly meet a German-accented man, which I rightly assumed was Wernher von Braun. But wait? Hickam said during his talk that he never met von Braun. Did the movie-makers change that part of the biography to tell a better story? It turns out they did. I checked that portion of the book against the movie, and sure enough, in the book Hickam says he never met von Braun. In the movie he did.
I’ve always liked to compare differences between books and their movie equivalents so this was a perfect case to do that with, since there was already one pretty major falsification. I just finished the book yesterday so I’ve not yet watched the movie again to do a full comparison, but I plan to get the DVD on Netflix and do that soon. In the meantime, I have just few responses to the book and a quote to share.
I was a little frustrated that I couldn’t follow the rocket science. The descriptions of the development and progression of the rockets’ designs or fuels assumed you knew the names of the parts of a rocket (which I don’t) and that you knew the properties of certain chemicals well enough to know what would happen when they mixed. I tried to visualize what the boys were doing and couldn’t. (My husband says the movie will help with that a lot since it’s already visualized for me).
I also didn’t expect so much “other” content, about relationships and minor characters and “the times.” At first I was bothered by how far off track I thought the main story was going. But I realized about 2/3 of the way through that the main story was not what I thought it was. The rocket story was just the “news hook” for a story about Homer Hickam’s life growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia. As someone put it, a “coming of age story.”
I marked several quotable passages, but the one below has a pretty universal application and is an idea I’ve subscribed to for years.
“Jake had it right. There’s a plan. If you’re willing to fight it hard enough, you can make it detour for a while, but you’re still going to end up wherever God wants you to be.”
Station Sighting
Apparently working at NASA turns you into enough of a space geek that seeing the International Space Station from your backyard is really cool. I saw the station for the first time this morning and was (still am) pretty excited!!
There’s been several opportunities to see the station fly over the area where I live but none of them when I was at a place when I could actually go out and look. This morning the station was to fly over at 6:29 a.m. at an almost 90 degree angle from the Earth giving you like 6 minutes to see it. So since I’m already up at that time anyway and went out to the backyard to see if I could find it. I knew it would be moving but wasn’t sure how fast. Six minutes sounded like a long time to cover the entire sky so I expected something kinda slow moving.
With that assumption in mind, I started by looking at stationary “stars” and watching closely to see if they appeared to be moving. I stared at one pretty bright object for like a minute and nothing. So I looked to the right and there was another pretty bright “star,” so I focused on it and after about 30 seconds was like “Yeah, that thing is now higher in the sky than it was when I first looked. So I just stood there and watched it slowly float over my head and then over my house and then out of sight.
When it got almost straight above me it was so bright and twinkly that my jaw dropped just in amazement of what I was seeing. I wasn’t amazed that there is this man-made spacecraft carrying men and women around in space. I was amazed that I could see it. That something that seems so, so far away I could see, and I could see it moving. It was cool, to say the least. Reminded me of the time I saw Saturn through a telescope. With my eyes Saturn looked like a shiny star. Through the telescope I could see its rings! It was amazing.
And, I’m pretty proud of this photo I took. The bright circle on the left is the moon and the small right spot (down and to the right) is the space station. I’m particularly impressed that I took this photo with my iPhone. The iPhone camera is pretty good, but never thought it would take a picture this good of something moving so fast and so far away.
Dr. Space
I just finished reading Bob Ward’s “Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun,” which I’ve been reading off and on for nearly nine months. It’s a very thorough book, and at times I found it overwhelming. But I was hopeful for some interesting nuggets of history or insight about von Braun — a household name in my hometown of Huntsville, Ala., and at one time a person after whom I considered naming my youngest son.
For all its cumbersome parts, the book certainly delivered on revealing things that I didn’t know. It also created a new appreciation for von Braun and the impact he had on space exploration and ultimately the history of Huntsville, America and mankind.
Throughout the book I marked several things that stood out to me. One of those was the “von Braun plan” for space exploration. I found it interesting that the plan von Braun laid out in 1970 is so similar to the plan we are under today. The timeline has been extended greatly and some of the plans were modified or downsized, but the basic outline is the same.
“The resultant twenty-year plan included several main elements. There were to be a series of three separate Skylab space stations in Earth orbit; a smaller, simpler Space Shuttle than the mainstream concept then being pushed; and continued production and use of Saturns and other launch vehicles for scientific , unmanned missions to Mars, the Sun, and on multiplanet tours. Later would come a larger shuttle, a larger, permanent space station, a permanent lunar base, and ultimately a manned mission to Mars.” (Ward, 192)
A second comment that really stood out is something I’ve written about here before, and that is the connection of God with science. Towards the end of his life von Braun wrote a presentation titled “Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application.” In that presentation he wrote about the compatibility of science and faith.
“‘In this reaching of the new millennium through faith in the words of Jesus Christ, science can be a valuable tool rather than an impediment. The universe revealed through scientific inquiry is the living witness that God has indeed been at work. Understanding the nature of the creation provides a substantive basis for the faith by which we attempt to know the nature of the Creator.’” (Ward 217-18)
Moon Hoax?
Mythbusters is doing a NASA-themed episode tonight. It’s all about the the conspiracy theory that the moon landings were a hoax. According to what I’ve read online, some of the specifics are looking at how the American flag appears to blow in the wind, yet there’s no wind on the moon, and whether or not a footprint can be made in dry regolith.
Those mythbusters folks are pretty thorough so this should be interesting. I actually won’t be home in time to watch it live, but I programmed the DVR two days ago to record it, so I plan to watch as soon as I get home.
A few months ago my co-worker David actually flew in the same microgravity airplane as the main guys (Adam and Jamie) while they were filming for the moon episode. This is actually a picture David took with his iPhone during the flight.
For the want of a nail …
My junior high and high school Bible teacher used to recite this rhyme to us.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
The meaning behind it — that the littlest things can affect such bigger things — hits me all the time! I think in some ways it’s a blame game, a way to take the responsibility off of ourselves and blame it on something else, in this case a nail.
I was reminded of this poem once again when I read this passage from “Some Trust In Chariots,” a book I am reading about the space shuttle Challenger incident. It is written by Gene Thomas who was launch director at the time. To set the scene, in the book Thomas has just written about the two days before Challenger launched and how and why launches were scrubbed on those days.
“I realized that had these two fateful incidents never occurred, the entire Challenger catastrophe might also never have happened. That fateful January 28, 1986 may have been avoided had we not gotten an incorrect weather prediction on Sunday, January 26. Challenger may never have occurred had we not experienced the failure of a two-bit hatch tool on Monday, January 27. Had we been able to launch under the conditions of either of those scrubbed opportunities, Challenger’s crew may have been spared. Surely the ‘O’ rings would have sealed properly under warmer conditions and America would be relishing the lessons of a teacher in space rather than mourning seven dead heroes. What a major part every event in history seems to play. Each minute detail must be in place to lead to a significantly historic event.”
This idea of how seemingly small details can have such large impacts is a topic I’m working on for another blog post. But I couldn’t let the opportunity pass of sharing a real-life example of something that I think deserves a lot of thought. Stay tuned ….
He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands
I love this first sentence from an article in this week’s paper, headlined “Solar system is dented, not round, space probes show.”
“When viewed from the rest of the galaxy, the edge of our solar system appears slightly dented as if a giant hand is pushing one edge of it inward, far-traveling NASA probes reveal.”
Later in the article they quote a NASA scientist.
“We used to assume that it’s all symmetric and simple,” said Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s literally like a hand pushing.“
Reminds me of the song we all learned as a kids, “He’s got the whole world, in His hands.”
Full story.
Scientific Reassurance
In response to my Sermon Notes post, a co-worker sent me the video below. It’s about 45 minutes so be patient and you’ll see some awesome things.
Indescribable – Louis Giglio
The video was in response to my first comment about not being able to understand God and the verse in Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
If you can never reach His level of understanding then why try? But if someone wasn’t out there trying we wouldn’t have some of the cool scientific and astronomical finds that only confirm the awesomeness of God and his Creation. As I explained today at work, my simple mind struggles to fathom that the universe even has mysteries, much less trying to find out what those mysteries are. The verse shared Sunday just confirmed for me that it’s OK not to need scientific reassurance of what a creative and mind-blowingly intelligent Creator we have. But as the video shows, it’s also OK to be amazed when science confirms what you already know to be true.
