SPACE AGE FUTURES PAST SPACE PAGE -- Looking Ahead By Looking Back

"ROARING ROCKETS!" CAPTAIN VIDEO, TOM CORBETT, SPACE PATROL FROM TV'S GOLDEN SPACE AGE!

"GALLOPING GALAXIES! SUPER STELLAR!"

The Space Age began on 12-inch black-and-white TV sets from space video ranger children on the early space television shows from 1949 to 1955, such as "Captain Video and His Video Rangers," "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" and "Space Patrol." At a time that Colliers Magazine featured space travel articles mapping future journeys yet to be and Viking and Bumper rockets took brief suborbital flights into space with instruments and animals from White Sands and Cape Canaveral, here were also "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" and "Johnny Jupiter" as well.

"SLITHERING SATELLITES! MOON FEVER!"

Until recently the "ROARING ROCKETS" websites, now vanished into cyberspace, artfully and playfully designed for those who watched these shows from 1949 to 1955 and for those who weren't around then but want to know what it was like back then -- featured in-depth, utterly delightful looks into Captain Video, Tom Corbett and Space Patrol, all performed live from six to one times a week, along with sections on tv space videos, interviews, toys, reports, heroes, awards, links, reminesences and much more.

"JUMPING JUPITER! HOPPING HERCULES!"

From an issue of the original "TV Guide" of December 2-8, 1950 (bought at a flea market) are listings for these children space adventure shows, all broadcast in live action:

5:15 p.m., Mon. thru Fti. - WJZ-TV 7 (ABC) - "SPACE PATROL" (Kid Serial) ---- 6:45 p.m., Mon., Wed & Fri. - WCBS-TV 2 - "TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET" ---- 7:00 p.m.. Mon. thru Fri.- WABD-TV 5 (Dumont) - "CAPTAIN VDEO" (Kid Serial) -- Adventures in the electronic age with Richard Coogan, Don Hastings amd Hal Conklin.

In the October 2-8, 1954 issue of "TV CUIDE" are these listings:

"THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN" Mon. 6 p.m. Ch. 4-NBC with George Reeves - Episode: "The Man in the Lead Mask" ---- "ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER" Thurs., 6 p.m., Ch. 4-NBC ---- "FLASH GORDON" Fri. 6 p.m. Ch. 4-NBC - "Escape With Time" - Steve Holland ---- "WATCH MR. WIZARD" - Sat., 4:45 p.m. Ch. 4-NBC with Don Herbert --- "CAPTAIN VIDEO" Mon. thru Fri. 7:00 p.m., Ch. 4 -- Oct. 4 "The Invisible Planet" - Ch..5-Dumont - Capt. Video & Jeff take off - Oct. 6 "Video discovers a mysterious planet with an even more mysterious inhabitant" - Oct. 7 An ecentric scientist plans to capture Video with Al Hodge & Don Hastings - Oct. 4 - The mad scientist uses one of his awful weapons on Video. ---- "CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT" Sat. 11 a.m. Ch. 2-CBS - Death Below Zero" with Richard Webb, Sid Melton & Ollan Soule --- "SPACE PATROL" Sat. 11 a.m. C. 7 ABC.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I have an original, perfect like-new mint condition Tom Corbett-Space Cadet cardboard cut-out space book. As a child I had a tin metal spaceport with model astronauts and aliens, remote control plastic robots, a toy planetarium and telescope, and model tin rocketships and flying saucers, all now in space toy heaven.]

These shows entertained and inspired a thirst for real space travels, with the youngsters of the 1950s in space by the 21st Century. Humans have only been to the Moon nine times with six landings, an historical spectacular achievement of course, since then and their automatic probes have surveyd the solar system and searched into the furtherest depths of the universe with telescopic eyes, but the longing for human space travel, exploration, adventure and settlement lives on.

"B'KLYN SCIENCE FICTION IS 'OUT OF THIS WORLD'"

That's the headline in a front page feature story by Harold Egeln in the BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE newspaper of July 14, 2011. The subheadline "Borough Spawns Many Imaginative Sci-Fi Writers" leads into mentions of Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl, and then current sci-fi and fantasy writers. There is a link, CURRENTLY DISABLED, to the article below.

The quotes beginning here with "Galloping Galaxies!" are from "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" broadcast in 39 filmed episodes in 1954, and uttered by Space Rangers Bobby (Robert Lydon, a 10-year-old boy) and Winky (Scott Beckett, once fro "Our Gang").

If you click on the ROCKY JONES, SPACE RANGER link, near the end of the Wiki entry are links to other early 1950s TV space series, such as: Buck Rogers, Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Captain Z-Ro. Flash Gordon, Rod Brown and the Rocket Rangers, Space Patrol, and Tom Corbett - Space Cadet. Not included are: Captain Midnight, Johnny Jupiter, The Adventures of Superman, Science Fiction Theater and Tales of Tomorrow.

The Wiki entry includes the CBC "Space Command" (1954-58) that starred James "Scotty" Doonan as "Phil Mitchell." Also there is the BBC Light Radio Programme series "Journey Into Space" (1953-58). ENJOY, SPACE VIDEO RANGERS!

SATELLITE CITY in NYC!!! Once upon a time there was a Satellite City in New York City. It was here inside the sprawling 85 acres Freedomland Entertainment Center, a pre-1964/65 NYC World's Fair Disneyland-like American history theme park in the northeast Bronx in 1960 off the New England Thruway in the shape of the continental U.S.A., now site of Co-Op City and the Bay Plaza Shopping Center. On only one occasion I was among Freedomland USA's huge number of visitors, visiting as a boy with my family. My absolute favorite place there was "the city of the future -- Satellite City!" "The New York Times" published a magazine advertising supplement, Section 11, on Sunday, June 19, 1960 about it as it opened, titled "Our Whole, Wide, Wonderful FREEDOMLAND Comes to Life in New York City -- World's Largest Entertainment Center." Here are highlighted texts about Satellite City of the Future in Freedomland from my mint-condition copy. I also have the Freedomland brochure. --- Harold Egeln, a Braniff International Airways Satellite City Space Ship "SPACE PIONEER." ********************************************************* Fantastic! Out of this World! FLY BRANIFF'S SPACE SHIP AT FREEDOMLAND! THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE UNIVERSE -- A real space adventure! Go into orbit! Sample a trip around North and South America! Bring the kids. Bring the whole family to Freedomland and head right to the Braniff Space Ship in the Satellite City area. Fun! Thrills! Memories you'll treasure all your life.... FACTS ABOUT BRANIFF'S SPACE SHIP -- Located in the Satelllte City area of Freedomland, New York's New Great Entertainment Center. Takes you on a simulated space tour of the U.S.A. and South America. See, in living color -- Rio and San Paulo, Brazil, and Buenos Aires; and to Rio de la Plata; Lima, Peru and the Andes Mountains, Panama and the Canal; Chicago; Dallas, Texas; New York City from the air. All the thrills of a real rocket trip into space! [from the Braniff International Airways "Space Ship" ad, half of page 5, showing the space ship in the shape of a huge silver flying saucer.] Another article reports: "For those who take this (space) trip, Braniff presents an award of merit identifying you as a space pioneer." ********************************************************* .... SPACE SHIP COVERS THE HEMISPHERE Out of the past and into the future. The boys rushed ahead to board the Space Ship, a stratospheric cruiser, and we -- not exactly counting ourselves as members of the space age generation -- tagged along. We were no sooner seated than the pilot's countdown began. Three -- two -- one -- then a tremendous blast of rocket power and then we felt ourselves soaring to 100,000 feet -- nearly 20 mles straight up into the air. The Moon shot aboard the Space Ship was successful -- and we returned to Earth.... [from "Freedomland - A Nation on Wheels -- By Stagecoach, Steamer or Space Ship, You Ride Coast-to-Coast" by radio talk show hosts Tex and Jinx McCrary, page 19] "On the thrilling Car-of-the-Future Ride, Amoco-Gas powers rocket-age cars that take you over the elevated highways of Satellite City." [from Amoco-Gas "Past, Present, Future" full page 4 ad] ********************************************************* Freedomland, 20-acres bigger than Disneyland, opened in mid-June 1960 and its last year was 1964 during the NYC World's Fair. It was an American history theme park, featuring outstanding cities and places, such as the Chicago Fire, 1850's Little Old NYC, the Wild West, the New Orleans Mardi Gras. a Great Lakes steamboat ride, 1900's New England, and a transcontinental steam-engine Iron Horse railroad trip around Freedomland's perimeter. Satellite City included Braniff's Satellite theatre with its 250 Space Rover theater, a Blast-Off Bunker simulating a Cape Canaveral rocket launch and flight, an automated Moving Lake Walk, the Satellite City Turnpike on which visitors traveled in the Amoco Car-of-the-Future, a Space Snack Bar, the Moon Bowl performing arts stage, and "fully-equipped spacemen of the future roaming Satellite City." There were also special exhibits and Chyrsler Airtemp had an exhibit "on what's ahead in science and engineering." Visit a Freedomland fan's website below and check out Freedomland in Wikipedia which includes more links and a video. *********************************************************

LUNCH WITH LESTER DEL RAY in MANHATTAN CIRCA 1990

For many years the outer side of my bedroom door was decorated by a large poster of an "Amazing Stories" magazine cover showing an alien invasion of another alien planet. The founding editor of the magazine was Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967), an Inventor, a writer and an editor known as "the Father of Magazine Science Fiction."

He also played a role in advancing early radio through improvements and promotion and, had a hand in the invention of television in the late 1920s-early 1930s. He was editor of "Radio News" and in the November 1928 issue, Gernsback featured the "Television Number." In 1925 he began experimental television with his WRNY TV station studio on the 18th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel on Madiso Avenue between East 45th and 46th Street, later the site for Creation Entertainment's hugely popular Star Trek science fiction conventions, which I attened there in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Science Fiction Achievement Award was named the "Hugo" in his honor. Around 1990 a friend of mine, famous sketch artist and scluptor Arnold Henry Bergier, who among artists, writers, poets and activists, led the movement to save Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, took me to lunch with Lester del Ray near his place in the Lincoln Center neighborhood. Del Ray (1915-1993) was a famed science fiction and fantasy writer and editor of science fiction books and magazines, such as "Astounding Science Fiction." He mentioned Gernsback, familiar to me since my teen years, and his interactions with him.

World War Two U.S. Navy veteran Bergier, who also had not only del Ray as a friend but Issac Asimov, was involved in the world government peace movement, and I worked with him for a while on his book about the subject. Below is a link on Hugo Gernsbach and other science fiction lnks.

*********************************************************