Disneyland - 1.20 - Man in Space - Part 1 of 4

Walt Disney began hosting his own television show for ABC in 1954 in an unusual contract: Disney provided ABC with a weekly hour-long television program in exchange for funding for the construction of Disneyland. As a result, the television show was also originally named Disneyland. The anthology series has since gone through a number of name changes over the years: Walt Disney Presents, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, The Wonderful World of Disney, Disney's Wonderful World, Walt Disney, The Disney Sunday Movie, and The Magical World of Disney. The series spanned an incredible 54 years—13 seasons of which were hosted by Walt Disney, himself.

With a combination of documentary footage and animation, the science and history of rockets, and the effects of space travel on man are illustrated.

Aired on Wednesday, March 9th, 1955 on ABC at 7:30pm
Aired on Wednesday, June 15th, 1955 on ABC at 7:30pm
Aired on Wednesday, September 7th, 1955 on ABC at 7:30pm
Aired on Friday, September 18th, 1959 on ABC at 8:00pm (under the heading of Walt Disney Presents)

• Category

  Film & Animation

[eotto2001]

Willy Ley left Germany before the Nazi's got into power. He was a science writer, but I believe he may have thought up the idea of the multistage or three stage rocket. He was in the US at the time and it was about a year before the end of WWII. He talks about the V-2 matter-of-factly here. Those were the rockets use on London nine years earlier. This was a very important series on space flight for the US public who had little or no knowledge on the subject.

[MsThedope]

1955, strictly forbidden to mention Tsiolkovsky - father of rocketry.

[qed100]

He was good looking. And yet, he was celibate to his dying day.

[David Powell]

A little dated maybe but a heck of a montage to show how gunpowder rockets advanced, and one of the reasons why!

[suzveve]

newton looked pretty sexy

[yowzephyr]

See Chinaman shoot rocket at 02:46. It very very funny!!

[J.P. Holeman]

Thank God that the Roman Candle Rocket Ride is not the only way through the mesosphere. Private sector aerospace will take us comfortably through to a zero g and 1 g station environment with normal cooking and bathing.

[qed100]

It was only embarrassing to the extent that the USSR did it first. The US had been fully able to orbit a satellite quite some time before October 1957. Probably the USSR could have put one up before then, if they'd wanted to badly enough. The two countries rocket technologies were roughly equal.

[Jonathan James]

can you imGINE .. IF hitler were still alive when werner made ehose a4's and the bigger rockets in the usa? .. a small adjustment and he could have sent it baxk to hitler then said "oops wromg plannet?"

lol. he was a nice man. he had no time for hate... but after barely surviving his att3empt to start a peaceful sopace program in germany, you'd imagine that it might have crossed his mind

[shaider1982]

Of course, there was rampant racism and sexism then. The USA was also much richer compared to the next 10 competitors.

[lovelylostlady]

Yeah but, equal rights...

[Duncan Smith]

Willy ley's real name is clearly Barron Klaus Von Nazi