Mass Media Paves the Way For Space Exploration

Mankind has always been interested in space exploration...but there's always so many things for a government to spend their money on that space exploration can be shunted aside, unless the public supports it.

Jules Verne, in 1865, published From the Earth to the Moon (French: De la Terre à la Lune. It's just after the Civil War, and a scientist devises a gigantic gun that can shoot a projectile up to the moon.

Rockets have been known for thousands of years - having first been invented in China, but rockets for space flight came a bit later. When scientists did start working on it, they were from all countries, but there was no real government program...they were all pretty much working on their own with limited assistance:

In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), published The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, the first serious scientific work on space travel. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation—the principle that governs rocket propulsion—is named in his honor (although it had been discovered previously). He also advocated the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propellant, calculating their maximum exhaust velocity. His work was essentially unknown outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel in 1924.

In 1912, Robert Esnault-Pelterie published a lecture on rocket theory and interplanetary travel. He independently derived Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, did basic calculations about the energy required to make round trips to the Moon and planets, and he proposed the use of atomic power (i.e. Radium) to power a jet drive.

In 1912 Robert Goddard, inspired from an early age by H.G.Wells, began a serious analysis of rockets, concluding that conventional solid-fuel rockets needed to be improved in three ways. First, fuel should be burned in a small combustion chamber, instead of building the entire propellant container to withstand the high pressures. Second, rockets could be arranged in stages. Finally, the exhaust speed (and thus the efficiency) could be greatly increased to beyond the speed of sound by using a De Laval nozzle. He patented these concepts in 1914. He, also, independently developed the mathematics of rocket flight.

In Germany, Willy Ley became interested in spaceflight after reading Hermann Oberth's book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("By Rocket into Interplanetary Space"). After publishing Die Fahrt in den Weltraum ("Travel in Outer Space") in 1926, Ley became one of the first members of Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR - "Spaceflight Society") in 1927. He wrote extensively for its journal, Die Rakete ("The Rocket").

The Depression probably prevented many would-be scientists from doing anything about space travel, and slowed down the progress of those who were already at work on the topic.

Science fiction in print form - namely the pulps - took off after April, 1926, when Hugo Gernsback founded the first magazine dedicated solely to science fiction - Amazing Stories. The pulps continued through WWII, although many went under because of paper shortages.

After the War, German rocket scientists who had worked on the V2 were captured by Russia and the United States. Werner von Braun especially made every effort to flee into American hands.

After his arrival - and that of many of his colleagues - in the US, the US space flight program started to gain a foothold, especially when, in 1950, the year 1957 was declared the International Geophysical Year. It was in 1957 that solar activity would be at its height, and every developed country in the world (except China) wanted to help investigate it.

With talk of satellites being sent into space (as well as with the cold war and fear of a radioactive WWIII, for real, science fiction movies and TV began to take off.) A movie about UFOs made its debut in 1950, in which it postulated that the UFO (which had been seen in 1949) was actually a Russian space craft -- rather than something from outer space).

Science fiction started on TV with children's programs:

Captain Video and His Video Rangers was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network from June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955, and is considered to be the first science fiction TW series.

Then came Space Patrol. Space Patrol began as a 15-minute show on a local (Los Angeles) station on March 9, 1950. On December 30, 1950, a half-hour show was added on Saturdays on ABC (while the 15-minute show continued daily locally, and was seen via kinescope in a few other cities). A 1953 30-minute episode was the subject of the first US experimental 3D-TV broadcast on April 29 in Los Angeles on ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

Space Patrol aired continuously until July 2, 1954; after a short break, it reappeared on September 4, 1954, and it finally disappeared from the air on February 26, 1955. 210 half-hour shows were made, and close to 900 15-minute shows over Space Patrol's 5-year run.

Shorty after Space Patrol made its debut came Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.

The series aired, in different years, on all four major television networks: on CBS from October 2 to December 1950, ABC from January 1951 to September 1952, NBC from July to September 1951, DuMont from August 1953 to May 1954, and on NBC again from December 1954 to June 1955, with the final broadcast on June 25, 1955.

1955 may be counted the watershed for outer-space based kids shows. All of them - Space Patrol; Tom Corbet, Space Cadet; Captain Video; Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers 1953-1954... to be replaced by Westerns!

To be sure, pilots were made, as for example Destination Space (1959). Men Into Space was an almost documentary-like present-day TV series, documenting mankind's attempts to expore the men. (I'll be sharng screencaps of these episodes shortly.)

The next major science fiction series - that wasn't an anthology - was Lost in Space, in 1965, running until 1968. Then, Star Trek, from 1966 - 1969.