A Little Bit More Than Lucky

October Sky also published as Rocket Boys is a memoir of a boy name Homer “Sonny” Hickam Jr. Sonny is destined to build rockets ad escape the grasp of the mine in his small hometown of Coalwood. Sonny and his friends work their way to get out of Coalwood. From blowing up fences to shooting rockets 3 miles into the sky, Sonny gets lots of help from his parents and people in Coalwood along the way. Sonny is also lucky though. Throughout the story Sonny finds things that are absolutely necessary for him to get out of Coalwood.

Initially in Sonny’s travels to become an Ex-NASA Engineer that he is today, his rockets had a poor guidance system and he couldn’t find a way to make the rockets go straight somehow he found a way to overcome this. One rocket even went missing. State Troopers found a rocket near a forest fire and assumed it started the blaze. After proving them wrong Sonny had a chance to look at the rocket (actually a flare) that the Troopers had found. While examining the flare with Quentin, a friend of Sonny’s, they then discovered the fins. They designed the fins into their next rocket and it went straight. This was pure luck that they got to see these fins which allowed them to make their rockets fo straight. A straight path also allowed the rockets to go higher which pushed them on to make it even better.

In addition to that stroke of luck Sonny also found his way to become quite smart. In fact he became an expert in math. Sonny gets rejected from a class he fought to get in his school, Calculus. Sonny finds himself at a lose if he can’t learn that calculus it would be a halt in his rocketry. When Sonny gets home after learning he can’t get into Calculus he is very disappointed. “My grades weren’t good enough to get into Calculus...” (Homer 264). While going back upstairs Sonny started reading book titles on the shelf and came across a book titled “Advanced Mathematics, a Guide for Self-Study”. Coming across this book was sheer luck and Sonny took it up and ran with it. After that Sonny studied and became an expert and advanced a great deal in his life.

Along with these examples was another major serendipitous piece of the