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" Of all the federal agencies created by Congress, one of the true success stories is the 'Mine Safety and Health Administration', which grew out of a bipartisan effort in 1977. "
Homer Hickam
True
Health
Safety
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" For a country like ours that needs to stay ahead of the world or go under, we must do great, ambitious things - like going to the moon - to survive. "
Homer Hickam
Ahead
Great
Moon
" Personally, I've got bigger hopes for NASA. I will stipulate it should keep putting telescopes in space so we can figure out where we fit in the universe, and it should also keep building those little robots that can and do. "
Homer Hickam
Building
NASA
Space
" Tired of burning fossil fuel and polluting the planet? The moon is covered with helium 3, an isotope from the sun that is the perfect fuel for clean fusion reactors. "
Homer Hickam
Planet
Perfect
Moon
" Glenn's 1962 Mercury flight was fraught with dramatics, from his 'Zero G and I feel fine!' exultation upon entering orbit to his reentry with what was feared was a faulty heat shield. After he safely splashed down, the nation erupted with applause and gratitude not seen since Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic. "
Homer Hickam
Gratitude
Feel
Flight
" My father lost an eye to a snapped cable while trying to rescue trapped miners, though he kept on working for fifteen years afterward. "
Homer Hickam
Trapped
Eye
Father
" My dad was a miner, but he was very much an intellectual. He loved to read. "
Homer Hickam
Read
Much
Intellectual
" I grew up listening to my dad, a miner who rose through the ranks to be the mine superintendent in Coalwood, W.V. , yelling orders into his black company phone. He wanted to get coal out of the ground and into coal cars and on its way to steel mills. "
Homer Hickam
Rose
Company
Phone
" After marketing surveys by Universal Studios indicated that 'Rocket Boys' as a movie title would not attract the female over-age-thirty demographic, the film was retitled and released as 'October Sky.' "
Homer Hickam
Rocket
Marketing
Film
" Throughout my childhood, when I raised my blanket in the morning, I saw a black, sparkling powder float off it. My socks were always black with coal dirt when I took off my shoes at night. "
Homer Hickam
Shoes
Night
Morning
" After I'd gotten a year under my belt in college, I thought I'd outgrown my home. "
Homer Hickam
Year
Belt
Thought
" Rational thought will always trump medieval dogma. "
Homer Hickam
Always
Dogma
Rational
" Remember, it isn't the dreamers who have good lives - it's the doers. Remember also what I call the three Ps of success: passion, planning, and perseverance. "
Homer Hickam
Success
Good
Passion
" When I was a boy, one of my favorite places to go was a pine-filled hollow high on the mountain behind our house. It was a place where the industrial song of Coalwood subsided. I would sit on a dead log and listen to nothing except the beating of my own heart and the thoughts racing through my head. "
Homer Hickam
Thoughts
Heart
Mountain
" The mining towns I describe in the 'Helium-3' novel series are not unlike Coalwood, but there is one major difference: Those towns, rather than being located in the Appalachian coalfields, are on the moon. "
Homer Hickam
Mining
Moon
Appalachian
" I have always found the best way to live is to be optimistic and energetic and willing to work hard for my dreams as well as the dreams of others. "
Homer Hickam
Work
Way
Dreams
" The best way to learn to write is to read in the genre you might be interested in; then, you need to actually sit down and write. In a lot of cases, the first book you write will not get published. Do not get hung up on that. Start a second book. "
Homer Hickam
Best
You
Start
" Interestingly, 'October Sky' is an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the same letters just moved around. This was discovered by director Joe Johnston using an anagram program on his computer. "
Homer Hickam
Sky
Rocket
October
" Rather than being an impediment, NASA can and should be the driver of commerce, the provider of the technology necessary to make some big money in space. The truth is that private enterprise already has a huge presence up there. "
Homer Hickam
Truth
Truth Is
Technology
" My father use to say if coal died, the country died. He was right. Our economy rests on the back of the coal miner. If we did not have the black diamonds of the mountains to burn, we would lose more than half of the nation's energy reserves. "
Homer Hickam
Energy
Black
Mountains
" A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a true story told as a novel, using techniques of novelization. The author is allowed to compress events, combine characters, change names, change the sequence of events, just as if he's writing a novel. But it's got to be true. "
Homer Hickam
Be True
Story
True
" Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. "
Homer Hickam
War
Brother
Children
" I always give a little talk before I sign books and ask for questions. I love the Q&A sessions. We have a lot of fun at my book signings. I make sure of that! "
Homer Hickam
Love
Questions
Always
" NASA's charter is to give Americans the means to get into the wild, black yonder, beyond even the grasp of the federal government that funded it. "
Homer Hickam
Government
NASA
Wild
" 'Rocket Boys,' for one reason or the other, just happened to strike a chord across country and across world, maybe because it's set in a little coal-mining town. That's why NASA likes it - most of the engineers come from towns very similar. "
Homer Hickam
Country
Engineers
Reason
" Coalwood, West Virginia, is the little coal-mining town where I grew up, and it was there that five other teenage boys and I famously built and launched rockets. I recounted this story in my memoir, 'Rocket Boys.' "
Homer Hickam
Rocket
Story
Up
" One thing we've learned about space is that the human body starts to fall apart after relatively short exposures to microgravity. "
Homer Hickam
Learned
Space
Short
" I want to make the conquest of the moon the United States' goal for the 21st century and, through that goal, to make us a great and good and happy country for generations to come. "
Homer Hickam
Country
Good
Great
" What kind of country just recycles its old money, reminisces about what used to be, and doesn't know how to weld, to machine, to cast or to bolt things together? Not one that's on a path to future greatness, that's for certain. "
Homer Hickam
Future
Greatness
Together
" I have the best fans of any author in the country and they deserve the best from me, too! "
Homer Hickam
Deserve
Too
Country
" If politicians want to save money, that's fine. They can look for all the wasteful spending they want, but not where the lives of miners are involved. "
Homer Hickam
Look
Want
Involved