It would be another four years before man would step foot on the moon, but the space age craze in the 1960s was in full effect. In the spring of 1965 Sachem was afforded the opportunity to view NASA’s Spacemobile, an educational unit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The roving educational mobile allowed students to culminate space study from their own science program by observing live exhibits and demonstrations. The traveling unit was operated by experienced science educators who traveled throughout the United States to speak about basic scientific principles by using visual aids and experiments.
By using authentic scale models of rockets and space crafts to explain future space projects, a lecturer traced early development of rocketry, and by utilizing electrical and mechanical equipment, he discussed the areas of propulsion and launch vehicles, electrical equipment and many of the problems encountered in space flight, both manned and unmanned, according to an issue of “Sachem News” from the time.
The Spacemobile spent a day at each of the district’s schools with programs geared for students from grade four through high school classes in physics and chemistry.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro