Men Into Space

Like several of us whom have commented, I was about seven years old when this show aired and it made a large and lasting impression on me. I actually negotiated a special Wednesday night bedtime in order to be able to see it. I wanted the Col. McCaulley helmet, but alas, we were of modest means in my household. When the Mercury and Gemini projects were underway, I felt that we were right on track and my friends and I would be pursuing our careers in space. I even majored in aero & astronautical engineering - just when the whole thing succumbed to post-Apollo apathy and Watergate nonsense. Imagine my disappointment. As time went on, I found fewer contemporaries that even remembered 1950's space movie and TV sci-fi, so I largely forgot about it. Then about 4 years ago I came across a source of the entire series of episodes on videotape (for $160). Unbelievable! Some of the episodes are exactly as I remembered them. And unlike a lot of childhood memories, the show turns out to be actually pretty good: It is more technically accurate than anything shown on TV since. You can spot actors like Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Robert Reed (pre-Brady Bunch) and Angie Dickenson (as McCaully's wife in the pilot episode). One of the episodes was written by James Clavell (well before Shogun). For a while in the mid-1960's there was discussion of a sort-of sequel to be called "Beyond the Moon" that would feature 1970's missions envisioned by NASA with technical accuracy. TV Guide carried an article on it. But it never materialized and instead we got mindless stuff like "I Dream of Genie." Anyone interested in this should also look for "Riders to the Stars," "The Conquest of Space," and the recent "October Sky," all of which capture the time of Sputnik and big dreams. This is the way space (and sci-fi) should have been in our lifetime! I invite anyone interested in discussing this further to contact me.

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.

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.

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 ran against Ozzie and Harriet, as I remember, as well as my Cub Scout base ball games. It was a fight against the whole family to let the one sci-fi nut of the group to see the one show he really cared about.

Looking back at the tapes from this future perspective, it is still the most accurate portrayal of space flight on TV. It is the space program us baby boomers from the 60's wish we had developed and followed thru.

If you get a chance, watch it. For a half hour 50/60's series, it's hard to beat. I still remember wishing my parents had bought me that Colonel McCauliffe space suit from the 1960 Sears catalogue.