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    Touch the Sky
    Touch the Sky
    Touch the Sky
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Touch the Sky

    By J.A. Busick, Catherine Jaime, Alan Boone and

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    About this ebook

    What inspires you? For millenia, humans have found inspiration in the night sky, the moon, and the ever-spinning stars of the cosmos. In July, 1969, all of the dreams of our history culminated in Saturn V launch that carried the Apollo 11 astronauts into space. A model of the massive Saturn V rocket now stands tall just outside the city of Huntsville, Alabama. To this day, it reminds us where inspiration can take us if we let it. In honor of the Apollo program and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, the stories in this anthology imagine the ways in which the Saturn V connects us to our past and points the way to future achievements. A great collection for reading aloud with your family. Let this anthology inspire you and give a powerful rocket-boost to your dreams!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlan Boone
    Release dateJul 3, 2019
    ISBN9781393958369
    Touch the Sky

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      Book preview

      Touch the Sky - J.A. Busick

      Touch the Sky

      Stories Inspired by the Saturn V

      ––––––––
      J.A. Busick and Catherine Jaime, Editors

      A project of the ...And We Write Writers Group

      Huntsville, Alabama, 2019

      Copyright © 2019

      All Rights Reserved

      Foreword © 2019 by Willie Bill Weaver

      Introduction © 2019 by J.A. Busick

      Dreams © 2019 by Catherine McGrew Jaime

      A Rocket to Dream On © 2019 by Sandra Clark Boone

      A Dog Named Something © 2019 by H. M. Jaime

      From the Earth to the Moon © 2019 by J.A. Busick

      Rocket City Treasure Hunt © 2019 by Maria C. Jaime

      Launch © 2019 by Alan Boone

      NOVA © 2019 by Stephanie Barr

      Cover design by Ash Busick

      eBook Edition

      The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

      I 'most could touch it with my hand!

      And reaching up my hand to try,

      I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

      From Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Introduction

      Dreams

      A Rocket to Dream On

      A Dog Named Something

      From the Earth to the Moon

      Rocket City Treasure Hunt

      Launch

      NOVA

      Foreword

      Fifty years ago, Saturn V rockets first carried men off our world into the heavens where they became the first of our species to set foot on another world. However, in our imagination, mankind had been making that journey for decades. As soon as our early scientists firmly established that the Moon and the planets were, in fact, separate worlds and not just mysterious lights in the sky, we began to imagine exploring them. Tales by authors like Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and Wernher von Braun have carried us on that journey many times. Versions of those tales have also been retold in our verbal and visual forms of modern entertainment. 

      My imagination along those lines was turned on at about the age of five. My mother spent part of an afternoon showing my sister and me how to find images in the clouds. We then watched the rising of the full moon and she pointed out the image of a man in the moon. She shared with us an old tale about a man who built a forbidden fire of leaves. As punishment, he was exiled to the moon where he must, with rake in hand, keep the fire perpetually burning. I must admit, I had trouble seeing that image, but the discussion did establish in my young mind that the moon was a separate world that men might occupy. By age ten I was an avid fan of science fiction in every medium. But I did not just consume the works of others, I imagined stories of my own and even committed some of them to paper. 

      Down through the years I have met many people along the way who also had an active imagination about men exploring other worlds. Many of us have been blessed by the opportunity to participate in our country’s programs of space exploration. Some of us spend part of our retirement as volunteers at the U. S. Space and Rocket Center where we love to show visitors the suspended Saturn V inside the Davidson Center and the full-size model overlooking Interstate-565, as we regale them about our time as Rocket Men. My experience there assures me that the imaginations of both the old and the young are still active and will continue to drive our further explorations. This volume gives a few illustrations of what could or may be.

      Here is just one of my many experiences from volunteering at the Space and Rocket Center:

      THAT’S NO SILO

      I first saw him just inside the entrance to the Saturn V Hall, looking up, mouth agape, at the large engines of the first stage. I greeted him. Without diverting his gaze, he asked, What is this place?

      I explained that he was at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a museum of the United States Space Program and offered to show him around. We looked at the scale model under the first stage and then walked the length of the hall and back as he explained how he got there.

      This was his first trip to Huntsville, in fact, his first trip to Alabama. He was a sales representative for a farm implement company. Leaving the airport and driving east along I-565, he noticed the large spire and watched as it came fully into view. He had to get a closer look, so he took the next exit and followed his gaze until he came to a parking spot close to the object that had gotten his attention.

      As he got out to get a better look, a bus pulled up and unloaded a large group who proceeded through an open gate. Wanting to get an even closer look, he went with the crowd and soon found himself in the Saturn V Hall, which is where we met. He explained that he had appointments that afternoon so he was on a tight schedule but would like to come back the next day and see everything.

      I told him I would love to be the one to show him around, but I had a conflict, therefore, he should look for one of the other guys in white smocks. After giving him instructions on how he should enter officially, I helped him exit back to the parking lot.

      Willie (Bill)Weaver

      Retired NASA Test Engineer

      June 19, 2019

      Huntsville, Alabama

      I have learned to use the word 'impossible'

      with the greatest caution.

      Wernher Von Braun

      Introduction

      When I first floated the idea of an anthology of stories inspired by the model Saturn V rocket that dominates the Huntsville, Alabama skyline, I said it half in jest. But I said it to Cathy, and Cathy – who has successfully published about 200 books – does not joke about such things. Cathy decided on the spot that we would do this. As a result, this book, like the rocket, is a thing that really exists.

      Think about that: we live in a world where rockets that can go to the moon are a real thing. They’re not dreams; they’re not science fiction. When I said We should do an anthology of stories about the Saturn V, I assumed in my subconscious mind that it would of course be an anthology of science fiction stories. But it has been fully fifty years since landing on the moon moved from the realm of Maybe someday to the realm of I remember when...

      This is not the stuff of science fiction anymore.

      These stories reflect that. They reflect that we live in a world, right here, right now, where the Saturn V rocket is the centerpiece of its own museum: tangible evidence that sometimes when we dream great things, our dreams might just become real. We live in a world where the dream-made-real of those spaceflight pioneers is part of our scenery, the backdrop against which we live our lives.

      So it is that these stories begin far in the past and run far into the future, ranging from Dreams, Cathy’s historical fiction fugue on Leonardo da Vinci and Katherine Johnson, through NOVA, Stephanie Barr’s science fiction vision of what our first steps past NASA might look like. In between, you’ll find rockets that inspire a sickly boy (A Rocket to Dream On by Sandra Clark Boone), rockets connected to important personal memories (A Dog Named Something by Hannah Jaime), a modern-day love story in the shadow of the Saturn V (my own story, From the Earth to the Moon), a treasure hunt that connects precious things in time and space (Rocket City Treasure Hunt by Maria C. Jaime), and a near-future tale of space colonization that rests solidly on the foundation of technology from yesteryear (Launch, by Alan Boone).

      We hope that you enjoy these stories. We hope that they convey to you a sense of the great wonder that we feel, living in this amazing world where rockets are real, people are right now living in space, and our past shines a light along the path into our future. We welcome you to talk about going to Mars in the same dreamy tones we once used about our dream of landing on the moon.

      Happy 50th anniversary of the moon landing to all of you.

      Jennifer Busick

      June 15, 2019

      Athens, Alabama

      Once you have tasted flight,

      you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward.

      For there you have been,

      and there you will always long to return.

      Leonardo da Vinci

      Dreams

      Catherine McGrew Jaime

      Milan, Italy

      August 1508

      Salai walked into Master Leonardo’s room just as he balled up a sheet of

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