The Big Blink: January 2009

Continuing the thoughts on Sheriff John's Lunchtime Brigade. I remember there was a space cartoon on it also. I think it must have been a series also remembered a second set. For years I have been trying to remember the name. I remember some iconic pictures from it. the space ship over the moon, the pilot hunched over his console, and the passengers sitting in the cabin watching meteors whoosh by.

So I have tried to remember what it was called over the years. It was not a really obvious name. Then last week i had my cousin Stanly over, and we were talking about the show. He remembered it too. To GOOGLE fountain of memory! Eventually we found it:

SPACE EXPLORERS!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Explorers

The Wikipedia article has a lot of great links, but to summarize the show was a cartoon serial shown in during the 50s. The sequel from 1959 was called the "New Adventures of the Space Explorers." It was shown on a couple of programs besides Sheriff John. The two-hour long sequel "New Adventures of the Space Explorers" featured additional educational space footage. For accuracy, both animated feature films used consultants from NASA and the Hayden Planetarium.
Shows like this one and the Disney space programs really had a lot to do with the fact that I developed a real interest in space and science.

The strangest part to me is that they used other sources for the art in the film. To quote Wikipeida,

"The material comes primarily from three foreign films : - various animation sequences come from the 1951 Russian film "Universe" by the late soviet director Pavel Klushantsev. - images of the rocket Polaris come from footage of German film "Weltraumschiff 1 Startet" (Anton Kutter, 1937) - but all images of the interior of the spaceship, images of the characters and from the walk on planet were extracted from a Russian cartoon film "Polet na lunu", (Flight to the moon), 1953, (Soyuzmultfilm).