Men Into Space

But it was as adult as could be expected. A fine depiction of men (and women? I forget) on the moon operating from space bases. Forty years later we STILL have no moon bases! I remember best the great fear they all had about their space suits being punctured (what WOULD happen, besides "instant death"?). A well done drama. Never rerun, unfortunately.

As with other reviewers, my impression of this never-syndicated, never-published-on-video series rests on childhood memories, in my case from age 7. However, at the time I had read a lot of popular books on the prospect of manned space flight, and "Men Into Space" resonated perfectly with the best that scientist-author Willy Ley and colleagues had to offer a 50's audience. As the episodes progressed, we witnessed man's first space flight, EVA, moon landing, and moon base operation. Space was depicted as silent (no "whooshing" spacecraft); multistage rockets were used; and full pressure suits were de rigueur.

I suppose this series stood on the broad shoulders of the Heinlein-penned film DESTINATION MOON (1950), but you have to credit the TV show's producers with a level of scientific integrity not seen in in network sci-fi before or since.

This was a quite good pre-Mercury attempt to show the future of space travel with emphasis on the team work of the crews involved. I recall shows dealing with landing on the moon and what man would find there. As well as working on building a space station and what would be involved. It did try to be factual but took dramatic license on a number of occasions.

I am possibly the only one who still has his official Col. McCauley space helmet (still in the original box).

I think it was on Wednesday nights. It was absolutely my favorite program at that time. I have never seen a single clip of this show since it went off the air. The only scene from an episode I can remember is the time Col. McCauley got separated from his space craft and started drifting away in space. All he did was repeat his name: "McCauley.....McCauley...." until he was located and rescued. Around 10 years later I remembered this scene while watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" when the astronaut, Dr. Frank Poole, was terminated by the HAL 9000 computer and was left to drift in space. I kept expecting to hear Poole repeat his name. But it was not to be. Poole was expendable. McCauley wasn't.

This show was another that vanished after one season but appealed to the imaginations of kids with unfamiliar concepts as weightlessness and a "hard vacuum". The show featured the McCauley character and crew blasting off on missions in a standardized multistage (?) vehicle, and doing space walks, rendezvous and powered landings. One episode had McCauley rescue a colleague on a very small asteroid doomed for destruction. As they departed the asteroid, the viewer sees petroglyphic markings on the space rock evidently left by an alien civilization (is this the episode titled "Is There Another Civilization?"). Shows of this genre inspired a generation of scientists and science buffs.