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''Men Into Space'' is an American black-and-white science fiction television series, produced by Ziv Television Programs, Inc., that was broadcast from September 30, 1959 to September 7, 1960 by CBS. The syndicated series depicts future efforts by the United States Air Force to explore and develop outer space. The series' star, William Lundigan, played Col. Edward McCauley. ==Scenarios== ''Men Into Space'' was not set in a specified era, but clues dropped in the scripts indicated that it took place between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, with the first Moon landing happening somewhere around 1975. Props were occasionally futuristic (such as a forerunner of today's real-life LCD TVs), but the show's Earthly clothing and environs, including automobiles, telephones, and other machines, were decidedly 1950s. ''Men Into Space'' was somewhat unusual for a TV action series in that it had numerous recurring characters, but only one protagonist, Col. Edward McCauley (William Lundigan), who was in all of the 38 series' episodes. Tyler McVey appeared in seven episodes as Major General Norgath. Ron Foster appeared five times as Lieutenant Neil Templeton. McCauley was a sort of "everyman" character who was viewed in the show as the most experienced and illustrious astronaut. As depicted in the scripts, the low-key but decisive McCauley was ubiquitous, assigned to every important space mission over at least a decade, including the earliest manned flights, the first flight to the Moon, many additional lunar landings and Moon base construction missions, construction of a space station, and two flights to Mars (neither succeeded, and folklore has it that plans for a never-aired second season would have focused on further missions to Mars and beyond). In many episodes the astronauts were faced with accidents or technical problems that required innovation. The program was not idealistic; missions sometimes failed and astronauts sometimes died. For example, a scientist-astronaut stricken with a coronary thrombosis while exploring the Moon was not expected to survive the G-forces of the return flight, so his comrades stowed the space-suited patient in a steel drum filled with water, to cushion him during launch. A "Space Race" episode involved spacecraft from the USA and USSR starting out almost simultaneously on the first Mars mission, with one of the spacecraft aborting its effort to rescue the other spacecraft and crew after it experienced problems. The series included an episode whose plot essentially paralleled the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission's explosion in space more than a decade later and another that was an uncanny foretelling of the accident that befell the real Gemini VIII mission in 1966. Scripts often considered the human factor, and while action was the show's forte, humor and romance were part of the mix. ''Men Into Space'' predicted women astronauts and scientists, and married couples in space. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Men into Space」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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