October Sky Rocket Launches

Miss Riley: ! “All I’ve done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what's inside it.”

C. W Besserer, E. Arthur Bonney, and Maurice J. Zucrow, Aerodynamics, propulsion, structures and design practice. Missile engineering handbook, Vol. 2: Principles of guided missile design. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1956

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Homer: ! I’m gonna build a rocket. Like Sputnik. Well, I’m not sayin’ it’s gonna go up into space or anything… but I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna build a rocket.

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fuse and fencewith the powder from 30 sky rockets

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fence…gone

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Auk I

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Auk II

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Auk V

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Auk VII

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Auk VIII

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Auk XIII Prodigious

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Miss Riley

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In May 1960, we launched Auk XXXI. It stood just over five feet tall and was 1.75 inches in diameter, had an electrical ignition system and aluminum fins bolted to the base, and was constructed of steel tubing with a nozzle and top plug machined from steel bar stock. We used zinc dust and sulfur as our propellant, and the steel nozzle had a throat diameter that had been calculated for maximum exhaust velocity. A converging-diverging design, it had been shaped on a lathe in the mine machine shop by a helpful machinist. To avoid erosion, we had lined it with an ablative ceramic. The nose cone was turned in the mine carpentry shop and fitted into a recess at the top of the casement. There was a vast gulf between this rocket and the backyard fence bomb we had built just a couple of years before.

Homer Hickam Jr., “The Big Creek Missile Agency”, Air & Space Magazine, March 01, 1995

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All of us rocket boys would go on to graduate from college, something not likely in pre-Sputnik West Virginia. Roy Lee became a banker. Jimmy went into insurance and farming. Quentin, Billy, and Sherman became engineers. I became a NASA manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center, von Braun’s old headquarters. Though I now work with astronauts and often see shuttle launches, nothing will ever compare to seeing an Auk leap into the air, propelled by the dreams of boys and the kindness of a small town.

Homer Hickam Jr., “The Big Creek Missile Agency”, Air & Space Magazine, March 01, 1995

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