Homer Hickam

At 81 years old, Homer Hickam physical status not available right now. We will update Homer Hickam's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Hadley Hickam Jr. (born February 19, 1943) is an American author, Vietnam veteran, and a former NASA engineer who built the first Japanese astronauts.

Rocket Boys, also known as October Sky), was a New York Times Best Seller and was the inspiration for the 1999 film October Sky.

Hickam's body of written material includes many more best-selling memoirs and books, including the "Josh Thurlow" historical fiction books and his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Life of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator.

His books have been translated into several languages.

Early life and education

Homer H. Hickam Jr. is the second son of Homer Sr. and Elsie Gardener Hickam (née Lavender). He was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia, and graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960. Roy Lee Cooke, Sherman Siers, Jimmy O'Dell Carroll, Billy Rose, Billy Rose, and Quentin Wilson formed The Big Creek Missile Agency, a division of the American Army. (BCMA) They qualified for the 1960 National Science Fair and received a gold and silver medal in the area of propulsion after many generations of designs.

In 1960, Hickam graduated from Virginia Tech and joined the Corps of Cadets, which was part of the school. He and a few classmates created a cannon for football games and school functions in his junior year. In honor of President John F. Kennedy, they named the cannon "Skipper" after him. Skipper was cut out of brass collect from the cadets and has become a hero for Virginia Tech. Hickam obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering in 1964.

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Career

Hickam served in the United States Army for six years and was honorably discharged as a captain in 1970. He served in Vietnam and 1968 as the first lieutenant and combat engineer with C Company, the 4th Infantry Division. He was given the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, and the Army Meritorious Unit Commendation ribbon.

Following his release from service, Hickam served as an engineer with the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command from 1971 to 1978, and he was posted to Huntsville. He served as an engineer for the 7th Army Training Command in Germany between 1978 and 1981.

In 1981, Hickam began work as an aerospace engineer with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center. (EVA): His specialties included instructing astronauts in relation to science payloads and extra-vehicular activities. In addition, Hickam served at the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator as a diver, where astronaut crews trained for a number of missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (with the first Japanese explorers), and the Solar Max repair mission. Hickam was the payload training manager for NASA's International Space Station program prior to his departure from NASA in 1998.

After returning from war, Hickam began writing in 1969. His first publications were magazine articles about scuba diving and his time as a scuba instructor. Then wrote about the war against the U-boats off the coast of the United States during World War II, after being immersed in several of the wrecks. This resulted in the publication of Torto Junction, a military history best-seller that was released in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press.

In 1998, Delacorte Press published Rocket Boys, Hickam's second book, detailing his life as the son of a coal miner in Coalwood, West Virginia. Rocket Boys have since been translated into several languages and published as an audiobook and electronic book. It was selected by The New York Times as one of the Month's "Best Books of the Month" by the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club's alternate "Book-of-the-Month" pick for both the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club among its many awards, as one of its "Best Books of the Month" selections. The National Book Critics Circle had also selected Rocket Boys as the Best Biography of 1998. Universal Studios released October Sky, based on Rocket Boys, in February 1999 (the word "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys). In an interview with Hickam, the film was "fine for what it is, a low-budget feel-good film, but it unfortunately skipped the best parts of my memoir. Even so, the world needs feel-good films, and it has done a good job of enthraging young people to follow their dreams. Rocket Boys the Musical co-authored by him, which, according to Homer Hickam, tells a tale that is closer to the one in his book.

Back to the Moon (1999), Hickam's first fiction book, was released as a hardcover, audio book, and eBook. It has also been translated into Chinese. Back to the Moon is Hickam's only book specifically about space. It's both a techno-thriller and a romantic book, telling the tale of a crew of "spacejackers" who commande a shuttle.

A year later by Delacorte Press, the Coalwood Way, a memoir of Hickam's hometown, was released by Hickam and is described as "not a sequel but an equal." In October 2001, Coalwood's third Coalwood memoir, a true sequel, was published. It's called Sky of Stone. In 2002, his last book about Coalwood, a self-help/inspirational tome called We Are Not Afraid: Coalwood's Town Inspired the #1 bestseller and Award-winning Film Oct. Sky, was published.

Hickam began his popular "Josh Thurlow" series, which takes place during World War II. The Keeper's Son (2003), the first in the series, was set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Ambassador's Son (2005) and The Far Reaches (2007), both set in the South Pacific, continued the series. Red Helmet (2008), a love story set in the present-day Appalachian coalfields and devoted to "Mine Rescue Teams Everywhere." With Anousheh Ansari, a multi-millionaire Iranian-American who became the country's first female commercial explorer, he co-authored My Dream of Stars (2010) in 2010. In November 2010, Hickam, a passionate amateur paleontologist, wrote The Dinosaur Hunter, a book set in Montana that was published by St. Martin's in November 2010.

The Helium-3 series, a young-adult science-fiction thriller trilogy set on the moon, was also published. It contained the Crater, Crescent, and The Lunar Rescue Company.

Wm Morrow/HarperCollins' best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man's Wife, and Her Alligator, which has since been distributed in 17 languages and received numerous awards, was released in 2015.

In 2021, Hickam published his well-regarded sequel to 'Rocket Boys,' "Don't Blow Yourself Up: The Rocket Boy of October Sky's Further Adventures and Travails. The memoir was written about 40 years after the Rocket Boys' time, including time as a student, teaching the first Japanese astronauts, diving on ship wrecks, and assisting the director and producer in the remote Honduran island of Guanaja.

In 2016, Hickam sued Universal Studios for fraud and negligence over his franchise rights, including The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone, We Are Not Afraid, and Carrying Albert Home. The case was settled in 2017 to Hickam's delight. In 2017, a federal lawsuit was initiated in Lincolnshire, Illinois, against suspected copyright abuse by the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and the Rocket Boys the Musical, Hickam's musical play based on his memoir Rocket Boys.

In May 2013, Hickam opposed a zero tolerance policy at Bartow High School, which culminated in the expulsion of a student whose science experiment had resulted in a small explosion.

Vice President Mike Pence appointed Hickam to serve as a member of the National Space Council's Users Advisory Group in February 2018.

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