The Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum has been taking the Glenn L. Martin Company rocket age history on the road to Harford County. Thanks to support from the Dresher Foundation, the museum is offering its outreach STEM education program “From Sand Dunes to the Moon” to third grade classes at Harford County elementary schools.
This interactive activity celebrating flight and Maryland’s contribution to the pioneering days of manned space exploration is designed to launch excitement for aerospace possibilities as it inspires students to explore the future of aviation while they discover and learn to appreciate the technological wonders of the past.
The school visit begins with a history of the beginning of the first successful aircraft flight at Kitty Hawk and the story of the Wright brothers and their quest to take to the skies like the birds. An interactive musical theatre presentation “Right Place, Right Time, Wright Brothers” performed by the museum’s theatre-in-residence Thirst ‘n’ Howl Musical Productions , involves the audience in Orville and Wilbur’s demonstrations. The second segment of the school visit brings the students forward in time to the age of rockets and space exploration, the time when the Glenn L. Martin Company of Middle River was manufacturing the Titan rocket that launched the Gemini space program. Students are put to work on an assembly line producing rockets they can launch for flight worthiness and then reconfigure their rocket design for improving the flight capabilities. Demonstrations of action/reaction, the forces and sciences of flight are included in the day’s activities.
As James Dresher Sr., founder of the Dresher Foundation and a former Glenn L. Martin Company employee, strived for success in each of his business ventures, this outreach program aims to provide students with the desire for achieving their goals and success in this 21st century. It showcases contributions made by aviation pioneers Glenn L. Martin, the Wright brothers and America’s astronauts to aviation’s advancement through their examples of good workmanship, tenacity and a “we can do it” spirit.
Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum comes to Harford