The 1963 U.S. Air Force film Space and National Security envisioned futuristic wars conducted in space. The clip above is taken from the fascinating NOVA episode, Astrospies. Many thanks to Matt Chapman of Homestarrunner.com for bringing this clip to our attention.
As Matt points out, the "non-animation animation" is similar in style to many of the 1950s Disneyland TV episodes like Mars and Beyond, and Man and the Moon, as well as non-Disney films like Rhapsody of Steel.
See also:
Air Force Predictions for 2063 (1963)
2063 A.D. Book (1963)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
Man and the Moon (1955)
Rhapsody of Steel (1959)
Hey Paleo-Future!
ReplyDeleteThis image of the U.S. spaceship reminds me a lot of the "Out of the Blue" album cover created by Japanese artist Shusei Nagaoka for the Electric Light Orchestra.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ELO-Out_of_the_Blue_Lp.jpg
Apparently the U.S. Navy had a plan (ca. 1960) to set up a missile base on the far side of the moon as a sort of ultimate "high ground," though it would have taken the missiles a lot longer than ICBMs to reach their targets. There has always been a swords-or-ploughshares back-and-forth issue where space is concerned, at least since Willy Ley noted (in the 1940s) that the thousand-pound V-2 warhead could possibly be replaced with "a man in a light diving suit." What nobody much noticed till Apollo 8 is that the perspectives of space travel tend to make "national" perspectives look obsolete; that scares everybody.
ReplyDeleteWar in space was definitely in the air. I've digitized a great piece from Saga about the original computer game of Spacewar at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kaleberg.com/spacewar/
Spacewar was one of the first graphical computer based games, but read on. The paranoia is great.
....google.....mystery space machines....watch on youtube.
ReplyDelete