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"Students Track the Space Age” Cape Kennedy Space Race Camp Century / Project Iceworm 61914 (1964)

1964 · Short film · 17 min

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Synopsis

This educational film "Students Track the Space Age" is part of a series of movies made by Hearst as part of the "Screen News Digest" series. This episode examines the space age and space race as seen by students and was presented by the Purdue National Bank of Lafayette. The first segment depicts high school students near Cape Kennedy in Florida and how they utilized old military tracking equipment in order to listen to exchanges between the Cape Kennedy Control Center and Mercury astronauts in orbit. The second takes a look at the construction of Camp Century in Greenland which was initially to be a science and research base though years later it was proved to be a cover for Project Iceworm which was abandoned in 1967. A countdown for a rocket launch is heard as students listen in and work with their own modified and upgraded military tracking equipment (:54). The students attend Cocoa High School (1:16) in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Students are seen milling through the campus which is situated near Cape Kennedy (1:28) and this exuded a heavy influence over the students and their education. Students are seen in class at Satellite High School (1:37) at Satellite Beach. They are seen working to prepare and publish the school newspaper called the ‘Telecaster’ (1:53). In the science classroom, a cathode ray oscillograph (2:06) and Galvanometer (2:28) are used. Over three years, the students had been able to use the formerly obsolete military tracking equipment to form their own…

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Details

Running time
17 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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