Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum comes to Harford
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.For 22 years, the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum, a 501(c)3 status museum at Martin State Airport in Middle River, has been serving the region as an educational, cultural and research facility. The mission is to provide an important United States museum dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting Maryland's aviation and aerospace history.During the years of the Gemini space program, there was an excited energy that captured the interest of people in this country to avidly follow the progress of these pioneering space ventures into the unknown. With its outreach program, the museum is working to rekindle the excitement among today's youth for exploring the moon, Mars and beyond, an excitable energy that can catapult the students into successful career paths and life choices. For additional information call 410-682-6122 or visit the museum's website, .