There is a movie called "October Sky" that tells the tale of a young man from a small coal mining town in 1957 where everybody is expected to grow up and be coal miners like their fathers. The "space race" between the US and Russia has just taken off and this boy has a dream to build a rocket. He does all of this in a time when the word rocketry does not exist because rockets themselves barely exist. During the story he goes through hard times, good times, and makes some new friends all while pursuing his dream of getting a rocket to space.

For 10 years now the Howe fourth grade class has had an opportunity to get a little closer to space. Once a week for seven weeks students met after school to learn how to build a rocket.

“For our hobby to grow and prosper, young people need to be introduced to joy of rocketry,” is how Ted Mahler sums it all up. With rocketry you get to witness first hand the joy these kids have of building something from scratch then making it fly hundreds of feet in the air. Then if they're lucky you can take that same rocket and do it all over again.

One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate rocketry in schools. For 10 years, Ted has been a volunteer teacher for a fourth grade, school sponsored, rocket class. “One of my goals with this class was to leave each child with not only the knowledge to continue the hobby, but all the equipment needed as well, including a launch pad and controller,” Mr. Mahler stated. When Ted was setting up the course he discovered there were few information sources for plans of individual ground support equipment. For this launch equipment he was seeking the following characteristics:

1.Low Cost. This was being taught in a small town school where many of the students could not afford a large fee. My goal was $12.00 total to cover the cost of a rocket kit, 3 engines, a launch pad and controller. With $5.00 allocated for the rocket, and $3.00 for the engines, that left only $4 for ground support equipment. Ouch!

2.Would require assembly. Nothing teaches better that hands-on experience. I wanted to present some basic electrical theory and having the students actually build the launch controller would reinforce the theory.

3.Assembly must be easy for a fourth grader in a classroom environment where each child may not receive individual attention.

4.Equipment should be rugged. These are fourth graders, need I say more?

5.Equipment must be able to be easily produced, in my garage, for 50 students.

To tackle the cost problem, I soon learned that the use of prefabricated parts like pushbuttons quickly ate up the money. Yet not using prefabricated parts increased the time it took me to make the parts. So a compromise had to be reached.

Launch pads are constructed from inexpensive, easy to find 2x 4’s and 1x2’s that total about $1.05 each. The launch controller is made up of a wooden base and inexpensive electrical parts that come to $2.85.

To thank Ted for all of his hard work over the years the students and teachers got together and gave him a plaque at this year's launch. It may not be NASA but if you could see the smiles on the faces of these kids that day you would agree that Mr. Mahler has touched the lives of these kids in a way they will never forget. You never know...one of these kids may end up like the young men in October Sky and go to work for NASA.