Spacemens Luck

 

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

Dimension X

The Federal Bureau of Missing Persons is broadcasting it’s latest coded bulletin transmission with a list of recently missing persons when they receive a CQ (SOS) radio message from a crank calling earth who claims to be calling from the Moon. Triangulating to locate the offender, radio operator Charlie Stafford discovers that the message did in fact come from the Moon from a man identifying himself as Cornelius Otterburn. Of course the call is dismissed, until a minor member of the Federal Bureau of Missing Persons begins to suspect that the call is related to a strange series of disappearances over the past several years.

Charlie Stafford tells Federal Bureau of Missing Persons records clerk Henry Stinton who recognizes the name and decides to investigate the name Cornelius Otterburn and finds only one person with that name has gone missing and he was an Atomic Physicist who had disappeared 5 years previously on June 5th 1945.

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1951 Movie When Worlds Collide

David Randall is a carefree ladies man and skilled pilot who finds he has been let in on the greatest and most terrible secret in the world when he is paid to deliver some mysterious pictures from one eminent astronomer to another.

The story begins at a remote observatory in South Africa where the astronomer, Dr. Emery Bronson discovers that two “heavenly bodies” are on a collision course with Earth. One, called Zyra will pass close enough to wreak havoc on land and sea, while the other, called Bellus will actually strike the planet and destroy it days later.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

A not so successful Madison Avenue ad executive named Syd Ryan is setting at his office desk when his assistant Oliver comes in and states that there is potential client waiting to see him. Syd has him sent in. The client identifies himself as simply Looshaw a Martian and says he wants to engage the ad agency for a campaign to announce the “Martians are Coming.” Thinking he’s a nut Syd immediately begins to throw Looshaw out when he offers a $5,000 cash retainer.

Once Syd gets his creative thoughts going he proposes a suspense campaign with some mysterious press releases announcing “The Martians are coming. ” Looshaw wants the ad campaign to culminate in a parade on June 1st which will be called “Martian Day.” The parade will herald the Martians arrival. Looshaw immediately approves authorizing a one million dollar budget. Looshaw continues that “We are selling a concept,” he tells the ad-man Syd Ryan. “The concept of invasion–from Mars.”

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2000 Plus

It is with regret that, for now I hope, there are no more 2000 Plus “Space Travel” related episodes known to be in circulation. There are a handful of episodes in the series that are in circulation but are not part of this website as they were not “space travel” themed shows. 2000 Plus (also called Two Thousand Plus and 2000+) was an Old Time Radio (OTR) series which ran from March 15, 1950 to January 2, 1952 in various 30-minute time slots. It is most notable for being the first adult science fiction series on radio, airing one month prior to the better known Dimension X.

During the 1950s, science fiction became a popular genre, and stories exploring future technologies, space expeditions and alien invasions made up the story lines of the episodes that are known today and available for listening.

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Space Patrol Show Logo

Commander Buzz Correy and Cadet Happy are on routine patrol to the planet Pluto where reports of a strange object far beyond Pluto is slowly approaching the solar system. Buzz and Happy head out beyond Pluto and discover an old abandoned spaceship. After boarding the derelict they discover a man just barely alive.

Transferring the injured man back to Terra V they make fast to the derelict and head back to planet Terra with the radiation soaked spaceship U87 in tow and the very sick spaceman Wes Pence. An investigation back at Space Patrol Headquarters on Terra reveals that the spaceship U87 is of Saturn registry, owned by one Joe O’Malley who had abandoned Wes Pence who must of been adrift for six to eight months.

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1951 Movie The Man From Planet X

A mysterious planet has entered our solar system and is approaching Earth at breakneck speed. It appears it will miss and pass near the earth. A small Scottish village name Burray on a remotes island is where the planet is expected to pass nearest to the Earth. A group of characters are gathering on the island to investigate this Planet X. Professor Elliot, his attractive daughter Enid Elliot, dashing reporter John Lawrence, a newspaper reporter called to the Scottish moor by his friend, Professor Elliot, to cover what will be the story of his lifetime. The Professor’s assistant who is a bad (but not mad) scientist Dr. Mears. The Professor and his team are working out of a makeshift observatory in an old Scottish tower next to the local moor.

Elliot’s daughter Enid and John discover as they are walking the moors a “magnetically powered range finder” used to determine the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere whose metal has unearthly properties and is quite a find for science.

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Dimension X

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.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

Premiere episode for the X-1 Radio Show series. In the far distant future of 1982, when trips to the moon, Mars and beyond are common place, spaceships are encountering a barrier of some kind that the Earth ships keep crashing into, or so they think. Six expeditions have been lost trying to cross it and their fate is a mystery, apparently no signal can pass through the barrier and radar signals bounce back, no one has ever heard from the spacefarers again.

Now, it is 2 June 1987, there is to be sixth attempt to breach what has become known as the wrecker of spaceships, the Galactic Reef, or the “Great Galactic Barrier.” The spaceship, Star Cloud has been selected for the latest mission and prepares to launch on it’s mission to breach the “Great Galactic Barrier.”

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Space Patrol Show Logo

Our story begins with Commander “Buzz” Correy and Cadet Happy of the United Planets Space Patrol are aboard the Battle Cruiser Terra V en route to Jupiter’s number two moon. An unmanned instrument station has stopped sending back signals.

As they approach the location of the station they realize the station’s atmosphere dome is gone. They land to investigate and they find the instruments are in place and the walls and the doors to the dome are still there but the plastic dome is completely gone without a trace.

Buzz and Happy head to Jupiter to the Shargon Physiological Center near Jupiter City where remote instrument station’s data is received and interpreted. There they meet with Major Robertson and Dr. William Conrad who is in charge of the program of monitoring the remote unmanned instrument stations. Commander Correy dispatches Major Robertson back to Jupiters number two moon to investigate the missing shell.

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1951 Movie The Thing from Another World Movie Title Card

The 1951 “creature feature” The Thing from Another World also known simply as “The Thing” was a ground breaking film that was the first movie to ever depict aliens with an attitude that seem to have only one thing on their mind and that is everyone. This theme of destroy humanity films became very prevalent during the 1950′s. Some say, and I am one of those who does, that “The Thing” was at least a partial inspiration for the much later ground breaking 1979 “creature feature” Alien, staring Sigourney Weaver which spawned several sequels.

1951′s The Thing from Another World is a story of Scientist at an US military Arctic research station, inside the Arctic Circle, who discover an unexplained object buried in the ice. After notifying the U.S. Air Force a plane load of Airmen and a lone news reporter are dispatched to the Arctic research station. There first belief is that buried craft is a Russian spy-plane buried in the ice.

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