Men Into Space

I was around 6 or 7 (like everyone else it seems). My clearest episode memory is one where they are all walking around on the moon, and one man notices some sort of sand streaming down off a large rock, so he walks over & cups his gloved hands under the stream. He immediately starts screaming in agony, but I don't remember why. Maybe it was super hot, or else some extremely corrosive substance.

In another episode, one member of the team is terrified because he swears he saw something moving while he was walking around on the moon. Eventually they all discover that he had seen his own reflection in a sheet of ice. This was their first discovery of ice on the moon, and they realise the implications.

This show significantly helped to define the exciting world I was lucky enough to be growing up into. Now the world has regressed thousands of years.

I was fourteen when MEN INTO SPACE aired, and missed very few episodes. In those days I had the pathetic notion that I would be involved with space engineering or sciences, a star that was already setting as I augered in at school. MEN INTO SPACE, however, kept the vicarious juices going, and it fuelled my passion for the embryonic space programme. In a way it was so good for television of the late '50s, one could almost consider an instrument of propaganda.

I recall that it a good show, which as per others, did try to be realistic. There was an episode of a runaway thruster on the space station -- a proper Ley wheel, not the contemporary lash-up of ash cans. Another episode treated the ejection of nuclear waste into orbit or the Sun. As some of my juniors have commented, the situations and projects depicted in that humble half-hour show are yet to-day only contemplated, so perhaps MEN INTO SPACE was more science fiction than future faits accompli that my young hopes embraced.

It was too early, and certainly too "technical" for television then and possibly now. Whereas TWILIGHT ZONE and ONE STEP BEYOND (both of 1959 et seq.) could count on pure fancifulness to secure loyal audiences, MEN INTO SPACE was "hard" S.F. There were just not that many people out there then to sustain a series, and it went the way of its distant cousin THE MAN AND THE CHALLENGE, also from 1959. Having no cable, and not attending science fiction conventions, I have not seen MEN INTO SPACE since the summer re-runs of 1960, which is . . . FORTY years! I am glad, however, it made an important impression on so many young kids, and their comments are actually moving.

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.

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).

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.