Spacemens Luck

 

Where Tom Corbett, Captain Video, CMDR Corry and Other Spacemen Still Live

This episode is one of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. The story begins in 1987 when the first astronauts from Earth aboard the spaceship XR-57 and a 17 Man crew have just landed on Mars. The landing party leaves the ship into a fog and the first thing they hear after emerging from their ship is the crowing of a rooster. Then they find an old fashioned lawn ornament in the shape of an iron deer sitting in the yard of a regular old fashioned house complete with a porch swing. As the fog clears the crew are shocked to discover a Rockwellian 1920′s small town, eerily similar to those they left on Earth.

Peering through the first house’s window they see a piano complete with sheet music. Their confusion becomes even greater when a little old lady answers the door bell. When they explain that they are from Earth the lady replies “you mean out of the ground?” Captain Black insists they are from earth and that this is Mars she replies insistently that this is Green Acres, Wisconsin in the United States of America in 1928.

Read the rest of this entry »

This episode of Dimension X was developed as a means of advanced promotion of the George Pal’s 1950 movie of Destination Moon. The Dimension X episode was based on an advanced copy of the screenplay.

Like the movie the story was based on the legendary Robert A. Heinlein’s novel “Rocket Ship Galileo” (1947) depicting man’s first flight to the moon.

In this radio adaption our story begins later in the story when General Thayer arrives at the rocket launch site to announce their permission to test the atomic motor was denied. They then anticipate that a court order will soon follow preventing them from launching and prepare for immediate launch and sure enough a court officer arrives and our crew launch to the moon.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the legend of old time spaceman “Noisy” Rhysling a blind singer of the spaceways who lost his sight saving a ship and then spends the rest of his life bumming rides on spaceships singing his songs. He is the poet laureate of space, part Homer, part Robert Burns, and part Rudyard Kipling. The space-going songwriter and radiation-blinded spaceship engineer crisscrosses the solar system writing and singing songs.

The story begins when the aged Rhysling is signed aboard the Tramp Spaceship Gartalk as a Jet Man. There is an engine malfunction and and Rhysling looses his sight.

Read the rest of this entry »

This very strange episode begins with a Commander Dykstra, representing Central Operational Headquarters, sending out a bulletin about a strange space craft entering Space Sector K beyond the gravitational field of the planet Mars. Thi strange space craft is heading into section G so he is putting all defense units with all all High Voltage Destroyers on emergency alert.

Next we learn that Spaceship Phoenix, Flight 17 an experimental flight for Neptune, is launched.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch Rocketship X-M: The 1950 Classic Space Travel Movie Rocketship X-M is available here for watching at Spacemen’s Luck. For more information and a review of Rocketship X-M go here:

Production Credits:
Directed by: Kurt Neumann
Produced by: Murray Lerner, Kurt Neumann
Screenplay by: Kurt Neumann
Cinematography Karl Struss
Production Designer Theodore Holsopple
Film Editor Harry W. Gerstad
Special Effects Jack Rabin
Original Music Ferde Grofe
Length: 77 Minutes

Read the rest of this entry »

Space scientists Dr. Ralph Fleming and Dr. Karl Eckstrom develop the first manned spaceflight, “Rocketship eXpedition Moon.” Dr. Ralph Fleming remains back on Earth while the Rocketship X-M crew, in addition to Dr. Eckstrom, includes Dr. Fleming’s Assistant Dr. Lisa Van Horn, Astronomer Harry Chamberlain, and ships engineer Major William Corrigan and pilot Captain Floyd Graham.

After a successful launch, the Rocketship X-M mission begins going wrong almost from the beginning, when their ship is hurled across space and past the moon by a rocket malfunction, where they land instead on the planet Mars. Deciding to turn their misfortune into an opportunity the crew begin to explore Mars. They no sooner begin their survey of the Martian surface when they find the remains of a once advanced civilization apparently destroyed by a nuclear holocaust.

Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the short story by Frederick Brown the story starts and ends with “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”

The show’s announcer begins by saying “a sweet blood curdling story that is only two sentences long. The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…” The story goes on and elaborates on those two sentences and builds a more complete story around them.

The story is about Walter Phelan, the last man on Earth. An Immortal space faring race calling themselves the Zan have invaded the earth and have killed off all life other than pairs of animal specimens for their zoo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Destination Moon is available here for watching at Spacemen’s Luck. For more information and a review of Destination Moon go here:

Production Credits:
Directed by: Irving Pichel
Produced by: George Pal
Screenplay by: Robert A. Heinlein
Length: 92 Minutes

Read the rest of this entry »

The beginning of space travel movies, for me at least, was Destination Moon. Most space travel enthusiasts, agree that Destination Moon began the 50′s space movie craze. It also was the foundation for most space travel movies up to and including those of the twenty-first century.

Destination Moon was George Pal’s production of legendary Robert A. Heinlein’s vision depicting man’s first flight to the moon. A Space Travel visionary, General Thayer, fearing that some other nation (The un-said Russians as this was at the beginning of the Cold War.) than the United States might get to the moon before the USA with less than humane motives, will take control of the Moon.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Veteran Comes Home is about a space soldier’s return home from a war on Mars to his anxiously awaiting wife and son, whom he last saw 5 years before as a baby. It’s a touching “comes home from war all confused and conflicted” story that is as much about the early 1950s as it is about today.

The story begins with Mary and her young son Billy at the space port waiting for the arrival of her husband and his father back from the wars on Mars. Michael, a Space Soldier, has been on Mars for the past 5 years fighting a war against the Martians.

Read the rest of this entry »