Arrival of the Supply Ship

Detail of the arrival of a supply ship, as propased by Dr. Wernher von Braun, to the earth-orbiting Space Station

The Third Stage of one of the rocket ships which originally established the station; next to the Third Stage, one of the small space taxis; in the forground another space taxi near the astronomical observatory . . . The men in space suits near the Third Stage and near the Observatory are floating freely.

painting by Chesley Bonestell
from Across the Space Frontier
edited by Cornelius Ryan
1952

The Complete Book of Outer Space

The Complete Book of Outer Space
Edited by Jeffrey Logan
Illustrator Frank R. Paul et al.
Cover artist Chesley Bonestell
Published by Maco Magazine Corp. (book form by Gnome Press)
Publication date 1953
144 pages
Originally priced for $.75

Contents:

1. Preface, by Kenneth MacLeish
2. "A Preview of the Future: Introduction", by Jeffrey Logan
3. "Development of the Space Ship", by Willy Ley
4. "Station in Space", by Wernher von Braun
5. "Space Medicine", by Heinz Haber
6. "Space Suits", by Donald H. Menzel
7. "The High Altitude Program", by Robert P. Haviland
8. "History of the Rocket Engine", by James H. Wyld
9. "Legal Aspects of Space Travel", by Oscar Schachter
10. "Exploitation of the Moon", by Hugo Gernsback
11. "Life Beyond the Earth", by Willy Ley
12. "Interstellar Flight", by Leslie R. Shepard
13. "The Spaceship in Science Fiction", by Jeffrey Logan
14. "Plea for a Coordinated Space Program", by Wernher von Braun
15. "The Flying Saucer Myth", by Jeffrey Logan
16. "The Panel of Experts"
17. "Chart of the Moon Voyage"
18. "Chart of the Voyage to Mars"
19. "Timetables and Weights"
20. "A Space Travel Dictionary"

Profusely illustrated with photos and drawings, published both as a paperback magazine and a hardbound book. A collection of essays about space exploration, life beyond Earth and flying saucers.

White Sands

Backbone of the American postwar rocket and upper atmosphere research effort was the wartime German V-2 rocket, of which 100 were shipped to the United States after the war and 68 were fired in varied experimental shots.

From the book "Worlds in Space"
by Martin Caidin,
1954

A Warning and an Ultimatum

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Company: 20th Century Fox
Director: Robert Wise
Year: 1951


Cast: Sam Jaffe, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, Lock Martin, Elmer Davis, H.V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson, Gabriel Heatter

Plot: A visitor from outer space lands his saucer in Washington, D.C. and announces to the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or faces the consequences as a threat to other planets.

The movie is based on a story by Harry Bates - “Farewell to the Master” which was originally published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding. You can read this in its entirety: Farewell to the Master.

Score: Bernard Hermann utilize the eerie and other-worldly theremin for the first time for the soundtrack of a screen production. You can hear a sample of this music here.

Moon Landing Under Earthlight

artist thomas voter's conception of a moon landing is shown, inset against actual photo of moon. note size of earth.

from The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed, Fawcett Books, 1952

"They've Landed"

On January 4, 1954 the Lux Radio Theater presentated it's own transcribed adaptation of "The Day The Earth Stood Still." And as in the original 1951 movie, the part of the other-worldy main character, Klaatu, is played by Michael Rennie. The radio version stays faithful to the no-nonsense movie, seeming almost to be using the same shooting script, although be it slightly shortened for the alotted air time.

Thanks to nomig.net for providing this radio play for free downloading.

The Douglas Skyrocket

The Navy Skyrocket high-speed research plane

The Skyrocket just moments after being dropped by a B-29 mothership

The Douglas D558-2 Skyrocket

• Role: Experimental high-speed research aircraft
• Manufacturer: Douglas Aircraft Company
• First flight: 4 February 1948
• Primary user: U.S. Navy
• Number built: 3
• Developed from: D-558-1 Skystreak (straightwing)

General Characteristics

• Crew: one pilot
• Length: 42 ft 0 in (12.8 m)
• Wingspan: 25 ft 0 in (7.6 m)
• Height: 22 ft 8 in (3.8 m)
• Wing area: 175 ft² (16.2 m²)
• Empty weight: 9,421 lb (4,273 kg)
• Max takeoff weight: 15,266 lb (6,923 kg)
• Powerplant:
  • 1× Westinghouse J34-WE-40 turbojet, 3,000 lbf (13 kN)
  • 1× Reaction Motors XLR-8-RM-5 rocket engine, 6,000 lbf (27 kN)

Performance

• Maximum speed: 720 mph, 1,250 mph when air-launched (1,160 km/h, 2,010 km/h when air-launched)
• Stall speed: 160.1 mph (257.7 km/h)
• Service ceiling: 16,500 ft (5,030 m)
• Rate of climb: 22,400 ft/min, 11,100 ft/min under rocket power only (6,830 m/min., 3,380 m/min under rocket power only)
• Wing loading: 87.2 lb/ft² (426 kg/m²)
• Thrust/weight (jet): 0.39

The Third Stage

The Third Stage of a rocket ship on its way to the orbit of the station in space. The painting shows the Third Stage at the instant of separation from the Second Stage; the later, its fuel supply expended and its parachute out, is dropping off. At this instant the ship is 39.8 miles above the Pacific, 332 miles from the launching site on Johnston Island, and 900 miles west of Honolulu.

Painting by Chesley Bonestell
from Across the Space Frontier, edited by Cornelius Ryan, 1952

Spa-a-a-ce Patrol!

Space Patrol: an entertaining space adventure radio program primarilly aimed at kids, starring Buzz Cory and Cadet Happy. There was also a version which simultaneously aired on television.

Broadcast History: September 18, 1950 - March 19, 1955 (129 episodes) ABC, 30 minutes, Mondays and Fridays at 5:30 pm.

"This is Earth - the year 2100. New York is the headquarters of Space Patrol and men from Earth, Mars and Venus live and work there as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men, whose courage and daring make the universe safe for us all."

Space Patrol outlined the exploits of Commander Buzz Corey (Ed Kemmer), who was placed in charge of a thirtieth-century police-keeping force operating from a man-made planet known as Terra. The jurisdiction of the Patrol included Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, collectively known as the United Planets. Assisting Corey was his protégé Cadet Happy (Lyn Osborne), a youthful sidekick prone to uttering the exclamation “Smokin’ rockets!”

Space Patrol debuted as a series on television before also becoming a popular radio program. The show was one of a myriad of kiddy adventures that dotted television’s landscape back in the 1950s, along with its outer space brethren Captain Video and his Video Rangers, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. It debuted as a fifteen-minute local show on KECA-TV in Los Angeles on March 9, 1950 and made its radio debut over ABC beginning September 18th as a twice-a-week (Mondays and Fridays) offering at 5:30 pm until January 8, 1951. It then returned to radio Saturday evenings at 7:00 pm beginning on August 18th before switching to a 10:30 am morning timeslot about a month later; remaining there until its final airing on March 19, 1955. The television version ended July 2 the previous year succombing to the trendy cowboy western.

Listen: Space Patrol Radio

The Past Through Tomorrow

The Past Through Tomorrow
by Robert A. Heinlein
A collection of his Future History stories

• "Life-Line", 1939; a month before "Misfit"
• "Misfit", 1939
• "The Roads Must Roll", 1940
• "Requiem", 1940
• "'If This Goes On—'", 1940
• "Coventry", 1940
• "Blowups Happen", 1940
• "Universe", 1941
• "Methuselah's Children", 1941; extended and published as a novel, 1958
• "Logic of Empire", 1941
• "'—We Also Walk Dogs'", 1941
• "Space Jockey", 1947
• "'It's Great to Be Back!'", 1947
• "The Green Hills of Earth", 1947
• "Ordeal in Space", 1948
• "The Long Watch", 1948
• "Gentlemen, Be Seated!", 1948
• "The Black Pits of Luna", 1948
• "Delilah and the Space Rigger", 1949
• "The Man Who Sold the Moon", 1950
• "The Menace From Earth", 1957
• "Searchlight", 1962

Disney's Mars and Beyond

And after Disney's celebrated "Man in Space" there comes in 1957 the continuing "Mars and Beyond."






For the complete series, begin your journey here: Mars and Beyond.

The Foundation Trilogy

The Foundation Trilogy
by Isaac Asimov
1951

Three classics of science fiction:

• Foundation
• Foundation and Empire
• Second Foundation

"When the Galactic Empire began to die, when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to Barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony—the Foundation—to incubate art, science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire.

The course of the Foundation's growth was plotted according to the science of psychohistory—conditions were arranged to bring about a series of crises forcing it to move rapidly along the route to future Empire . . ."

Mr. Asimov

Music of the Spheres

Music of the Spheres
by Guy Murchie
1961
illustrated by the author

A book about space, time and matter — the great adventure of our age.

Contents:

• Out From the Breathing Earth
• Into the Stomach of Space
• Invitation to the Moon
• Our Sister Planets
• Gadflies of the Void
• Introduction to the Sun
• The Cousin Stars
• The Foreign Galaxies
• Stuff of the Worlds
• The Netherrealm of the Atom
• Of Waves and Music
• Of Light and Color
• Of Space, Of Time
• The Sinews of Reality

Of All Possible Worlds

Of All Possible Worlds
by William Tenn
1955

Contains the following Tenn classics:

• Introduction: On the Fiction in Science Fiction
  
• Down Among the Dead Men (Galaxy 1954)
  
• Me, Myself and I (Planet, Winter 1947)
  
• The Liberation of Earth (Future, May 1953)
  
• Everybody Loves Irving Bommer (Fantastic Adventures, Aug 1951)
  
• Flirgleflip (Fantastic Adventures, May 1950)
  
• The Tenants (F&SF, 1954)
  
• The Custodian (IF, Nov 1953)

William Tenn is the pseudonym for the science fiction work of Philip Klass. Born May 9, 1920, in London, England, he moved to New York where he grew up in Brooklyn. Since 1945, he has written academic articles, essays, two novels and more than 60 short stories.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia ranked Tenn as "one of the genre's very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction."

Bibliography

• Children of Wonder (1953)
• Of All Possible Worlds (1955)
• The Human Angle (1956)
• Time in Advance (1958)
• A Lamp for Medusa (novella published as a double with The Players of Hell by Dave Van Arnam) (1968)
• Of Men and Monsters (1968) (novel)
• Once Against the Law (1968) (anthology of crime fiction edited by Tenn and Donald E. Westlake)
• The Seven Sexes (1968)
• The Square Root of Man (1968)
• The Wooden Star (1968)
• Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume I (omnibus) (2000)
• Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume II (ominbus) (2001)
• Dancing Naked, the Unexpurgated William Tenn (nonfiction omnibus) (2004) [Hugo Nominee, Best Related Book, 2005]

External Links:

• William Tenn official site

The Collier's Space Flight Series

For the early part of the decade a series of stories featured in eight issues of Colliers, penned by the brightest rocket scientists of the day and brilliantly illustrated by Chesley Bonestell, sparked the imagination of the American public. For a summary of the Colliers series of articles concerning the possibilities of manned spaceflight, launch: The Ugly Spaceship.

Man Will Conquer Space Soon (March 22, 1952)

Man on the Moon/The Journey/Inside the Moon Ship (Oct 18, 1952)

(not featured on cover)
Man on the Moon/Inside the Lunar Base (Oct 25, 1952)

World's First Space Suit (Feb 28, 1953)

(not featured on cover)
Testing the Men in Space (March 7, 1953)

How Man Will Meet Emergency In Space Travel (March 14, 1953)

Baby Space Station (June 27, 1953)

Can We Get to Mars?/Is There Life on Mars? (April 30, 1954)

Imagination Unlimited

More illustrations from the ink of Edd Cartier - imagination unlimited. His depictions of alien lifeforms and futuristic gadgetry are unparalleled.

Dimension X & X Minus One

Dimension X aired on NBC radio from 1950-51.

X Minus One aired on NBC radio from 24 April 1955 until 9 January 1958 for a total of 124 episodes during its run.

X Minus One was an extension of Dimension X . The first fifteen scripts used for X Minus One were scripts used in the airing of Dimension X; however, it soon found its own little niche. The stories for the show came from two of the most popular science fiction magazines at the time; Astounding and Galaxy.

Dimension X was first heard on NBC April 8, 1950, and ran until September 29, 1951. This program was the first true series dedicated to the science fiction genre. Until the premiere of Dimension X -- a full two decades after network radio was established -- there were no major science fiction series of broad appeal to adults.

Special Thanks to OTRR and Internet Archive for offering these radio programs free for download to the public:

• Dimension X
• X Minus One

What If?...

What if history played out the way one pioneering visionary had dreamed of it?

Man Conquers Space - The Conquest of Moon and Mars

What if America had followed through with Dr. Wernher von Braun's original, expensive and ambitious vision of travelling to the Moon, and then on to Mars beginning with the resources and science available in the 1950's? This filmmaker attempts to put the whole story together on the screen of that grand vision.

Edd Cartier - Artist of the Other Worldly

A favorite artist of the SF pulp/digest magazine era - Edd Cartier illustration from the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. Never one to fall short on imagination, the artist even created illustrations for an entire interseller zoo in the book "Travelers of Space."

Edd Cartier (born 1914) is an American pulp magazine illustrator. After studying at Pratt Institute in the 1930s he worked for Street and Smith, publishers of the Shadow, to which he contributed many interior illustrations, and the John W. Campbell, Jr.-edited magazines Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown.

Outside Links:

• Edd Cartier at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• An interview with Cartier
• Edd Cartier gallery

Disney's Man In Space

Disney's Man in Space - Conquest of Space - Launch! Von Braun's vision comes alive in 1955 with a little help from the Disney animators. This clip features a retriever rocket and a wheel-type space station.

Launch eight segments of this historic film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75vX6O8paGo

Interplanetary Traveler

from "The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed" (Fawcett Book 166), 1952.

The Sound Barrier Awaits

The date is June 18, 1947. The place is Muroc AFB. B29 and two XS-1 rocket planes. The one at center is lowered down a ramp to be mated to the mothership's belly.

"The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed" (1952)

"The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed"
Fawcett Book Number 166
Author: Larry Eisinger (editor-in-chief)
Publisher: Fawcett (Sterling Publishing Co.) NY 1952
magazine, 144 pages
original price: $.75

Contents

1. Spaceships are Already Here!, by Harland Manchester
   
2. The Physical Problems of Space Travel Are Being Solved, by James L. H. Peck
   
3. A Journey to the Moon, by M. W. Wholey, G. I. Mech. E.
   
4. From the Moon to Mars, by Willy Ley
5. Life on Other Worlds, by M. Frederic Sanchez, PH. D.
   
6. Communication With Other Worlds, by Willy Ley
7. The Expanding Universe, by Lloyd Mallan
   
8. Space Travel is a Serious Business, by Alfred Eris
   
9. Space Travel in History, Fiction & Film, by Lloyd Mallan
   
10. Fortress on a Skyhook, by Frank Tinsley
    
11. Possibilities for an Invasion Base on the Moon, by Willy Ley
12. A Case for the Flying Saucers, by Donald E. Keyhoe
13. An Investigation of the Carolina Saucer, by John Duberry
    

Profusely illustrated with nearly 300 photos (B/W). Subjects include rocket development, space travel, life on other worlds, science fiction movies and flying saucers. Cover photo is from the movie When Worlds Collide (George Pal/Paramount Pictures).

Electrolux Death Ray

Cunningly developed by Brotron Labs from an Electrolux vacuum atop a Steelcase chair base. A no nonsense, cut-to-the-chase destroyer. Please use responisbly.



Watch the Brotonic Weapons Death Ray demonstration.

Worlds in Space

dust jacket for the London-published edition

"Worlds in Space"
by Martin Caidin
illustrated by Fred L. Wolff
published 1954
Sidgwick and Jackson, London
212 pages, 64 plates (16 photographs, 48 drawings)

Contents:

1. This is how we stand
2. Robots into space
3. The weakest link–man
4. The first space ships
5. The space satellite
6. Earth below
7. Expedition across space
8. On the moon to stay
9. Fortress in the sky?
10. Beyond the moon
    

"Five years have passed since February 24th, 1949, when a V-2 rocket soared upward at 5,100 miles per hour and set a new record at 252 miles above the earth's surface...[Worlds in Space] tells the history of rocket development thus far and reveals the steps by which man will eventually travel to other planets."

dust jacket of American edition


hard cover embellishment

"The three-stage space ship envisioned by Dr. Wernher von Braun, who has been carrying out an extensive publicity campaign in favour of space travel now. Von Braun's three-stage space ship is designed to carry a crew of about six men and 34 tons of cargo to an orbit 1,075 miles above the earth, where a space satellite will be assembled, to whirl about the earth at a velocity of 15,840 miles per hour."

illustration by Fred L. Wolff


"A combination of proposals from both sides of the Atlantic. The space satellite depicted in its final stages of construction is the design proposal of von Braun, the space ships indicated a variation of a delta-wing suggestion by R. A. Smith of the British Interplanetary Society."

illustration by Fred L. Wolff