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MEN INTO SPACE! |
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Roughly five years after all the other space adventure series, such as SPACE CADET and SPACE PATROL and CAPTAIN VIDEO, had left the airwaves, along came a filmed series, MEN INTO SPACE (1959-60). On paper, the series had everything going for it, including designs by Wernher Von Braun and Chelsey Bonestell that were updates of the original Colliers' Space Symposium plans. There was a delta-winged space shuttle launched by a multistage booster, a scaled-down lunar expedition with one passenger and one cargo ship, and a Mars expedition ship incorporating a large landing glider.
Only the moonship was used, and in a way that makes no sense! In the pilot film (the second program to be broadcast) we get our first and only look at the Bonestell booster taking off (it is never seen again in the series). But the shuttle is preposterously small in scale with the booster, because a gigantic open-strutted moonship is impossibly perched where (and completely out of scale with) the space shuttle alone should go. The moonship, which was intended by Bonestell to be actually larger than the shuttle-booster combination, somehow proceeds to the moon's orbit, and then lands on the moon, several broadcasts before a space station is built! (The actual moonships designed by Bonestell would have to be assembled in earth orbit by crews from such a station.)
This one broadcast made total hash of the entire Von Braun space program, and things only deteriorated thereafter. None of the space hardware seen made any sense nor was any one bit of hardware genuinely consistent with the rest of the hardware, in any viable space program. In one swoop, the series thus betrayed both the original Colliers Symposium hardware and the much-scaled-back space hardware being proposed in 1958 - 9. |
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The shuttle is just about to somehow transform to the lovely Bonestell moon ship. His actual expedition required two ships, but only one model was built. (The earth backdrop is a Bonestell painting from the book CONQUEST OF SPACE... many such paintings were used in the series. |
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Our only glimpse in the whole series of the shuttle liftoff. (Sequence by Irving Block, Jack Rabin and Si Simonson). In every other program, the "shuttle" takeoff is represented by a newsreel of an Atlas missile liftoff! |
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The lunar lander model as seen in the series. It is never made clear after this one broadcast just where the lunar expeditions start from, or how they return to earth, although the series does depict, later on, the construction of a manned "space wheel," the Aries. Apparently, despite the complete scale inconsistency, and many other problems, we are supposed to believe this huge, unstreamlined structure is routinely launched from the surface of the earth! (Look carefully at the first two photos above!) |
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The beautiful conceptual painting, one of about six Bonestell did for the series, showing the moon expedition. (The one-way cargo ship carrying supplies for a lunar base, seen at the lower left of the painting, is never depicted in the TV series.) Click the image for an episode guide. |
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Not used at all except as a glimpse of a "reconstructed alien spaceship" was Bonestell's design for a Mars expedition ship, complete with landing glider, and the usual delta-winged shuttle return ship at the very tip. |
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The only continuing character in the series was Colonel Ed McCauley (Bill Lundigan). With no regular team of space explorers to root for, audience sympathy was not greatly encouraged. (For a list and description of the 37 episodes in the series, plus one never broadcast, click on the photo.) |
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The model of the permanent manned space station Aries, as seen in the series. Several episodes are devoted to its construction. (For more information on this series, click on this photo.) This is a cutaway model; the finished model used in the series is shown on the next page. Click on the last image on this page to get to page 2. |
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As the only space-travel-themed program on TV since the "real" age of the Conquest of Space began with Sputnik in the Fall of 1957, this tepid, dull and unimaginative series received far more media coverage than it merited, and there were even a few spinoff toys. (For a look at the Bonestell shuttle versus the shuttles actually depicted, and a glimpse of a few tie-in toys, click on the photo.) |
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