Research Paper On October Sky

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The movie “October Sky” by, Joe Johnston is a great film. The story is located in West Virginia. It is a small coal mining town during the 1950’s. The town's mine is owned by John Hickam (Chris Cooper) who has two sons, Jim (Scott Miles) and Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal). John wants his sons to follow his footsteps to become coal miners, but when Jim gets a football scholarship and Sputnik 1 passed over their little town, Homer gets other Ideas of what he wants to be. His friends, Quentin Wilson (played by Chris Owen) Roy Lee Cooke (William Lee Scott) and Sherman O'Dell (Chad Lindberg) help him on a journey to fulfill his dreams. Soon after seeing Sputnik 1 pass over their town Homer starts building rockets with his friends. At first no one thinks much of it until Homer's father realizes that he doesn't want to become a coal miner. Upoun knowing this Homer's father forbids building rockets all along the coal mining properties. So he and his friends, build rockets in the next town over, in Snakehead which at first was a 12 mile hike until they could get someone to drive them. When Miss Riley (Laura Dern) hears that Homer …show more content…

In the movie they needed a carbon steel, alloy called, S.A.E. 1018 bar stock. This alloy is more heat resistant than the steel that they were originally using. The metal that they were originally using was not heat resistant enough and the nozzle of the rocket kept on getting melted, meaning that the rocket would not fly straight. The metal that they needed though costed a lot much. They had to de-rail an old rail track and sell the steel to get enough money for the S.A.E. 1018 bar stock. The last engineering challenge was the place they lived in. Since they lived in West Virginia they did not have a lot of open space until they got to an old abandoned mine deposit in Snakehead which is the district next to

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