DISNEY &
SPACE TRAVEL
Walt Disney's long relationship with NASA and his interest in space travel goes back to a 3-part "science-factual" television series. The programs, which aired between 1955 and 1957, were called Man in Space, Man and the Moon, and Mars and Beyond. Walt and his studio worked closely with prominent German scientist Wernher von Braun, who served as technical advisor on the programs.
In a real sense, Walt helped von Braun sell Americans on space during a time when traveling to the moon was purely science fiction.
(Von Braun went on to oversee most of the achievements of the U.S. space program - including the historic 1969 moon landing - until his death in 1977.)
It was Disney animator Ward Kimball (who was senior producer of the series) who actually took notice of von Braun and other scientists through articles in Collier's magazine. Along with Walt, they used the new medium of television to illustrate how man might fly to the moon and beyond.
The 3 episodes sold many Americans on the idea of space flight, including a young teenage boy in Iowa named Stephen Bales. Bales was inspired to become an aeronautical engineer by one of these very episodes.
"It was about 1956 when I saw that Disney program," Bales remembers. "I must have been 13. It really wasn't
that darned far off, either. It had some exploratory missions. At the time, one of the big unknowns was what the back side of the moon looked like. So they were checking out the back side and they were doing radar mapping of the moon. And then they had another flight and actually did the landing. I was watching all of that, and it made a big impression on me. It was outstanding." Bales went on to take part in the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 as a member of mission control. "It was the Walt Disney cartoon come to life."
Even U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower took notice of Disney's Man in Space. He requested a copy to impress the military top brass who were dismissing space travel as "Buck Rogers science-fiction."
In 1965, 10 years after Man in Space first aired, von Braun invited Disney and others involved in the 1950s episodes to tour the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He hoped that Disney's further involvement in the space program would bring about greater public interest in the future. (Today there is a display about Disney's 1950s television shows at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center
in Huntsville.)
These 3 successful TV shows were just the beginning of Disney's
interest in space travel. They can be seen today on the 2004
DVD release Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland: Disney
in Space and Beyond.
Past and present theme park attractions like Mission to Mars,
Star Jets, Space Mountain, Space Station X-1 and Mission:SPACE
continue to reinforce Disney's as well as the public's interest
in space exploration.
In the early 1950s Collier's magazine invited von Braun to publish his vision regarding space exploration. The articles (complete with illustrations from leading space artists) probably did more than any other medium to suggest that space travel was possible. At its highest point, Collier's attained a circulation of approximately 4 million very excited readers. But von Braun realized that another medium called television had the potential to influence even a greater number of people.
DID YOU KNOW
The 29 missions that the United States and the Soviet Union sent to the moon between 1959 and 1976 are each designated on the moon sphere in the Planetary Plaza of Epcot's Mission: SPACE.



"Now, when we opened Disneyland, outer space was Buck Rogers. 
I did put in a trip to the moon .... and, of course, we were going up to the
moon long before Sputnik.  And since then has come Sputnik and then has
come our great program in outer space.  So I had to tear down my
Tomorrowland that I built 11 years ago and rebuild it to keep pace."
- Walt Disney

Did you know that Walt Disney helped the U.S. military imagine the experience and reality of space travel?
Get your Disney tickets at Maple Leaf Tickets!
TO INFINITY ...
... AND BEYOND!
"Although This Day in Disney History is not an official Disney site so I do know that space shuttle astronauts don't fight over a window seat." - This Day in Disney History webmaster