A few months ago I stumbled over a website which sells old TV series, and on a whim I picked up a copy of the old Men Into Space series.
William Lundigan stars as Colonel McCauley, an intrepid rocket pilot. The series starts off with early space flights, and progresses through building a space station to colonizing the moon; by the end of the series they’re starting on trips to Mars.
It’s hard sci-fi; everything is done as scientifically accurately as they could (although they do fall back on magnetic boots to avoid expensive zero-gee effects). McCauley never takes wild chances; his problems are realistic and so are his solutions.
It’s lots of fun, although I must say that the Air Force’s space program seems to be pretty accident-prone–it seems like something goes wrong about once a week!
Most surprising of all, Mrs. R really likes it, although she’s not much into sci-fi. She says it depicts the space program as it was supposed to be, which I thought was an interesting thing to say.
Come to think of it, she had a really good time in the Evergreen Air Museum’s spaceflight wing. I think she’s a closet space junkie.
I’ve written about this severa times on this Board. I recall seeing this as a kid, but it’s one of the Great Lost TV series. It has never, AFAIK, been syndicated, or been available on VHS or DVD. If you found it, let me know where – Id love to get a copy.
Even books specializing on SF on TV rarely mention the series. One book, which listed every episode of other classic SF TV, did not list a single episode of Men Into Spavce (although at least it acknowledged that it existed). It wasn’t until the internet came along that I found detailed information about the series.
Please give us further information on where you found this. send me a message if you don’t want to post it.
as I recall it, the series was near-future near-Earth “hard” science fiction. No aliens, interstellar travel, or egregious violations of physical laws. William Lundigan, who starred, was also in the film Riders to the Stars, currently the topic of another thread.
My Hallowe’en costume for kindergarten (or perhaps first grade) was Col McCauley.Think the first time I ever hear of the show was a good 35 years later, though…
Hehe. You’d think people would stop inviting Jessica Fletcher (and Monk) to their events, because every time she shows up, at least two or three people buy the farm.
I remember this series. As I recall, it was pretty serious, almost documentary-like.
Yes, but that’s precisely the type of thing I mean – possible alien artifacts, but no people walking around with rubber appliances glued to their faces.
