"Space Travel and You" Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Magazine (Summer 1956)

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Magazine for Summer 1956 featured an article based on the Walk Disney's "Man in Space" and "Man and The Moon" television shows.  I am fascinated how Disney and von Braun worked together to prepare "propaganda" films to forward the idea of manned space flight.
(See http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/disney_article.html)

 

As another platform for reaching the youth of America was the magazine Disney produced to build on the popularity of the Mickey Mouse Club television show.  Many of the articles in this magazine built off of Disney features. the article however does not describe the Disney film, rather it describes what it would be like to experience a trip to the Moon in 1976.

 

This article gives me another chance to appreciate the work they put into creating models and illustrations to show how logical space flight would be if we just got around to it.

 



 I have mentioned this moonship in other postings but it is interesting to see how basic design ideas are carried out to create a circumlunar ship.

1. The fuel tank are ejectable to you can get a high initial thrust without carrying extra weight.
2. The ship is streamlined because it is a "standard" orbiter ship launched from earth and then retrofitted for a journey by removing the wings and tail. The "capsule" sticking out of the side is actually an enclosed spacesuit/spacecraft they used to construct the space station and repair satellites in orbit.
3. The ship has a "pointy" nose not for streamlining but rather it separates the nuclear generator on the very nose of the ship from the passenger cabin.

 I still wonder why they chose a three "spoke"space station rather than two or four.

 Even with extra fuel it still took them five days to get to the Moon.