Are STEM Students Free To Launch Rockets?

The movie, October Sky, released in 1999 and based on Homer Hickam's memoir, Rocket Boys, is a riveting celebration of American know-how and determination.

It's set in a small West Virginia coal-mining town in 1957 when the Soviet satellite Sputnik is launched spearheading the Soviet/American space race.

Hickam, who later became a space engineer, at the time was a high school student, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, with dreams of designing rocket ships. His father, who works in the mines, vehemently disapproves and wants him instead to follow in his footsteps. But Hickam continues to pursue his dreams.

Young Hickam, along with his school buddies, and with the full  support of his science teacher, enters a student science competition and begins test firing rockets, many of which either fail to launch or blow up without ever leaving the ground. In the end, they achieve a successful launch.

After I watched this movie (which was a few years ago on either a VHS cassette or a DVD), I concluded that the kids today who are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programs in high schools would not be able to enjoy the same freedom to experiment with rockets as Hickam was. And  their efforts, because of national security concerns, would be stymied by government interference and/or accusations of terrorist activity.

An LGBT Moon Colony?

Radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, a liberal, once briefly interviewed a scholar who worked at a libertarian think tank. The scholar had written a paper regarding the colonization of the moon as a social experiment.

That idea got me to thinking: what if lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people established a moon colony? Would that society be just and egalitarian or corrupt and totalitarian?

The "Hidden Figures" Book Proposal

Entertainment Weekly (December 30, 2016/January 6, 2017 Double Issue) reports that Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of the New York Times Bestseller Hidden Figures, a non-fiction book about four black female NASA mathematicians, wrote a "55-page book proposal for Figures [that] eventually made the rounds in Hollywood and caught the attention of [film director Theodore] Melfi."

I'm sure there are budding writers and a few long-time pros who would love to see Ms. Shetterly's book proposal in print so they can study it and learn how to write a winning proposal that lures literary agents, book editors, and possibly Hollywood directors.

"Hidden Figures," The Movie

Last night I saw Hidden Figures (twice). This excellent film focuses on three African-American women who worked at NASA in the early 1960s and whose extraordinary math skills helped launch astronaut John Glenn into space aboard Friendship 7.

I have the book by Margot Lee Shetterly on which the movie was based and I plan to read it very soon.

I hope to obtain the DVD of the movie when it becomes available. I'm sure bootleg copies are already on the street. But I'll wait for the official version with all of the features that are sure to come with it: commentary by the director, screenwriter, and actors, a documentary about African-Americans at NASA (with an on-screen interview with the book's author), etc.