Spacemens Luck

 

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

The state of America’s manned space travel program today is in disarray. With the US having no spaceship in it’s fleet capable of carrying personnel into space. And the only other means for American’s to get into space is via the Russian space fleet which has been temporarily (Hopefully) de-certified due to the failure of last weeks cargo flight to the ISS space station.

The reason we are in this position is because our national leadership has failed to keep their eye on the ball over the last ten or fifteen years and allowed our space program to decline to the point it is today.

What prompted me to right this article is I came across a classic failed pilot for a CBS TV series from 1959 named “Destination Space”. The movie over all is standard science fiction for day. But what I found interesting was the speech before a congressional sub-committee criticizing the congress and other leaders on their leadership in the space program. It is to my knowledge the first time that space travel was shown in a plausible political context that is relevant to this day. A leader of the congressional sub-committee suggests that space travel was not just a technological triumph and a great adventure but also costly and that financial justification is an important consideration as well.

I regret that there was only this one pilot episode and not at least one season of the show made. The film used a lot of stock footage from the earlier 1955 space travel movie “Conquest of Space”. Specifically the views of the “The Wheel” (space station) and the spaceship which is bound for the moon. In the source movie of the stock footage “Conquest of Space” A team of American astronauts leave their space station on the first mission to Mars.

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Tom Corbett Space Cadet Show Logo

While returning from leave on Venus Astro is at the Venus Space Port and is confronted by a stranger in the dark. At first Astro doesn’t see who the stranger is but once he identifies himself as his cousin Murko, Astro see’s that the stranger is an exact duplicate for himself. Murko distracts Astro while his companion Beal hit’s Astro over the head knocking him out. They drag Astro off somewhere secluded and give Astro a shot of Sodium Pentathol (truth serum) to learn about the patrol and his Space Academy friends.

Murko takes over Astro’s place at the Space Academy. Almost immediately Tom becomes suspicious and Murko senses the suspicion. So he fakes an episode of being stunned and goes blank and when he comes out of it he explains to Tom and Roger that after they left Venus he was in an accident with a head injury. Tom and Roger are immediately concerned and want to take Astro (Murko) to the dispensary but he convinces them that he is alright and if he has another episode he will check into the dispensary himself.

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Jan Merlin actor who played Roger Manning in the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

Space Travel Hero Role: Cadet Roger Manning of the Solar Guard’s Space Academy in the Television and Radio series “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” 1950 – 1954. Fifty years after the series ended, he is still making personal appearances as a result of that role.

Space Travel Bio:
In the fall of 1950 he became the idol of millions of children when he won the role as Cadet Roger Manning in the Television series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet as a member of the elite Solar Guard, 400 years in the future. It is this role, especially to classic space travel enthusiasts for which this site is dedicated, and that of Lieutenant Colin Kirby, Confederate officer turned soldier of fortune, in the 1958 Television series “The Rough Riders,” he is most famous for.

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Dimension X

This episode of Dimension X is a rebroadcast of the the No Contact episode first broadcast on Dimension X on 50-04-22 as episode 4 of the new series. The George Lefferts story No Contact was again heard on radio as the premeire episode for the (New) Science Fiction Anthology radio show X Minus One (X-1) on 04-24-55.

In the far flung future of 1982 (no kidding), Spacemen discover The Great Galactic Barrier. Manned space flights to the moon and mars are common. Now they are trying to travel to the planet Volta (not sure where this is or eve what solar system). Volta is beyond the barrier. The Great Galactic Barrier is a strange invisible barrier which is frustrating Man’s attempts to explore the depths of space. So far five ships have attempted the voyage, but none have ever returned, their fate a mystery since no signal can pass through the barrier.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

A mysterious visitor, named Graffious, to the Broderick Detective Agency, in downtown New York, hires Detective Broderick and his assistant “Iron Man” Doolan to find the Martian Embassy. Both Broderick and Doolan think Graffious is crazy and start to throw him out of their office. But Graffious flashes a $500.00 bank note and suddenly they are all ears.

Grafiius explains that he is an eccentric that believes that if the Martians were on Earth they would be here only as a prelude to an invasion. That if they are indeed on Earth they would have their base “embassy” in New York the center of economic and political activity. Their Embassy would act as a listening post to gather intelligence for their planned invasion.

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Tom Corbett Space Cadet Show Logo

TomCorbett2

Tom Corbett, Roger Manning and the Venusian Astro were on holiday on Venus when they discovered that Pirates equipped with giant robots, similar to the ones they encountered on their Giants of Mercury adventure, had been holding hostage the residents of the the mining settlement of Gold City, Venus while stealing the city’s gold. At the end of the first part of this story the Space Cadets have just rescued the entire population of Gold City, Venus.

Our story “Holiday of Terror” continues as they commandeer the space freighter that the Pirates left behind to go after the pirates before they can escape. Paroling space in the area of Venus the Space Cadets are unable to find the Pirates trail. Finally Tom concludes that the Pirates took off toward space as a ruse but actually doubled back to Venus where their hideout is.

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Tom Corbett Space Cadet Show Logo

Venus celebrates its 100 years of independence and the space cadets Tom Corbett, Roger Manning and Astro are on a weeks leave from the Space Academy and are spending it at Astro’s uncle’s Gold mine located in Gold City, Venus. The cadets have borrowed a Jet Launch from Astro’s family and after crossing the Venusian jungle land near Gold City and find the town completely deserted.

During their search of the deserted town they check Astro’s Uncle’s shop and discover the body of Astro’s Uncle’s partner Peter Abbott. Now very worried the cadets return to their Jet Launch and take off to investigate the gold mines near Gold City.

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Dimension X

This is the story of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and is of the Fourth Mars Expedition. The previous three Mars Expedition’s had all failed with the rocketships landing on Mars then after 24 hours of landing no further contact with them was made.

Our story of the Fourth Expedition begins as they make their landing on the surface of Mars. After landing they send out a scouting party, lead by the crew’s physician, Hathaway and assisted by archaeologist Spender, to a nearby Martian city. Meanwhile the rest of the crew remain near the ship awaiting the return of the Hathaway search party and are gathering firewood against the cold Martian evening.

Hathaway and Spender’s search party returns and reports that all of the Martians have died of chickenpox (most likely brought by one of the earlier three expeditions). In a celebratory fashion the Captain authorizes alcoholic beverages to be issued and the crew began partying and celebrating the end of the Martians.

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1953 Space Travel Movie It Came from Outer Space

Based on a Ray Bradbury story “The Meteor”. Amateur astronomer John Putnam, a romantic dreamer misunderstood by the local townsfolk, and schoolteacher and fiance Ellen Fields see a fiery ball fall from the sky and crash into the desert near the small town of Sand Rock, Arizona. John drags his friend, Pete, out of bed to take him and Ellen over to the crash site near the old Excelsior Mine in his helicopter. Once there, John climbs down into the crater. Unfortunately, he does so alone, as Pete and Ellen wait for him on the rim of the crash crater. John is the only one who sees the spaceship before a landslide covers it. And John is the only one who catches a glimpse of the hideous thing inside.

John Putnam’s story is ridiculed by the townspeople, Sheriff Warren, and the local media. Even Ellen is unsure of what to believe at first, but soon agrees to assist John in further investigation. In the following days, several local people disappear. A few return, only to begin to act in bizarre ways, such as speaking and behaving in a zombie-like manner and staring directly at the sun for long periods of time. In the meantime, the local telephone repairmen, Frank Daylon and his assistant George, are kidnapped by the creatures who convert to the looks of the repairmen and begin to act strangely. John is convinced that their likenesses were taken over by the space visitors. As it turns out, they are actually aliens from the buried spaceship, and the real humans have been abducted by them including his fiance Ellen.

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X-1 Classic Science Fiction Radio Show

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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