Friday, May 7, 2010

Tomorrowland: 1955

I rented from Netflix "Tomorrowland Disc 1" from Netflix which was first made and show on Disneyland the TV show of Walt Disney's in 1955.

I was amazed that Werner Von Braun's spacecraft is not that different than the space shuttle and except for the wide base of the main Saturn Booster being not as fat as in the program and the Space shuttle being a little more like a flying boxcar than a passenger airplane, the design is pretty much the same as the model in this 1955 Tomorrowland TV series. I could see that this series of programs prepared the American public in an entertaining way for the next 55 years until now.

When I first watched this Tomorrowland programs on Disneyland on TV there were only three major networks ABC, CBS and NBC. So literally almost everyone who owned a TV saw these series of programs that was able to. So even though there were no VCR's or DVR's then or even DVD players then people made it a point to be there to see these programs because in their own way they shook our world then and this shaking brought us all the way to now. At the time this program aired Sputnik, the first Soviet Satellite (first successful Satellite every launched was still 2 years away. So until Sputnik went up the U.S. hadn't panicked yet and really got its Space program underway after that. So by July 1969 when the first U.S. Pilots landed on the moon it was a very amazing feat because in 1955 no one in the public had any idea this was even possible. When we saw these programs many adults just laughed at what was said and didn't take it all seriously. However, when Sputnik went up no one in the U.S. was laughing. We were all scared. So the U.S. Space program began from fear of being attacked by the Soviets from Space. What an amazing program that all the basic space shuttle ideas were already formulated in 1955. Amazing!

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