Fourth Estate
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 1998
Published in paperback as October Sky in 1999
This edition published in 2015
Copyright © Homer H. Hickam 2005
Homer H. Hickam asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
‘It’s All in the Game’ by Charles Gates Dawes and Carl Sigman. Lyrics reprinted courtesy of Major Songs (ASCAP) c/o the Songwriters’ Guild of America © 1951, and Warner Bros Publications, Inc. Rights for the British Reversionary Territories controlled by Memory Lane Music Limited, London. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ by Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain. © 1955 Twentieth Century Music Corporation. © Renewed and Assigned to EMI Miller Catalog, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Warner Bros Publications, Inc.
Front cover photograph © Andrew Rich/Getty Images
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008166083
Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008172275
Version: 2015-11-06
To Mom and Dad And the people of Coalwood
All one can really leave one’s children is what’s inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away.
—Dr. Wernher von Braun
All I’ve done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what’s inside it.
—Miss Freida Joy Riley
THE ROCKET BOYS of the Big Creek Missile Agency and their lives and times were real, but it should be mentioned that I have used a certain author’s license in telling their story. While I have used the actual names for each of the boys and my parents and most of the people in this book, I have used pseudonyms for others and also sometimes combined two or more people into one when I felt it necessary for clarification and simplification. I have also taken certain liberties in the telling of the story, particularly having to do with the precise sequence of events and who may have said what to whom. Nevertheless, my intention in allowing this narrative to stray from strict nonfiction was always to illuminate more brightly the truth.
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