October Sky

Fourteen year-old Sonny Hickam knows that after high school, his foreman father expects him to work down in the mines. But Sonny has seen Sputnik move across the sky, and he intends to become a space engineer. Encouraged by his revered teacher, Miss Riley, and receiving secret help and supplies from some of the mine's workers, Sonny sets about building the perfect small rocket that will soar high into the sky and be his passage out of the suffocating town of Coalwood, West Virginia.