science

The Space Explorers

The Space Explorers is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Space Explorers rather than just read about it. In short: The Space Explorers is an American animated film created by Fred Ladd that was later turned into a cartoon serial and spawned a sequel series, New Adventures of the Space Explorers. The film aired in 1958; the sequel series aired the following year.

Key takeaways

The Space Explorers belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Space Explorers to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Space Explorers from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Space Explorers is an American animated film created by Fred Ladd that was later turned into a cartoon serial and spawned a sequel series, New Adventures of the Space Explorers. The film aired in 1958; the sequel series aired the following year. For accuracy, both animated feature films used a consultant from Hayden Planetarium.

Synopsis

The cartoon, which featured Jimmy, Smitty and Professor Leon Nordheim on board the Polaris spaceship, taught space-related concepts.

Production

The films were originally created for the education market, to be shown in classrooms. They were made under the technical guidance of Franklyn M. Branley, Associate Astronomer, American Museum of Natural History-Hayden Planetarium. It may have been rushed into production to "capitalize on the Sputnik craze". 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). Except for 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).

Release The Space Explorers first aired in 1958 on nationwide television shows such as Claude Kirchner's on WWOR-TV, Captain Kangaroo, Captain Video (DuMont), Captain Satellite, Sheriff John, Officer Joe Bolton, and Romper Room. It was followed by the two-hour-long sequel New Adventures of the Space Explorers the following year.

In popular culture The spaceship from the series, the Polaris, has been featured on the very beginning of Chapter 5 of NOVA's Public Television (PBS) production of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. It has also been seen on Mike Myers Saturday Night Live skit Dieter.

Reception In a book written by Ladd and Harvey Deneroff, they describe the film as a "cult classic". According to Jörg Hartmann The Space Explorers instantly became widely distributed in North American TV. It stood out among similar-themed children's series through its impressive special effects. The Space Explorers as well as the New Adventures of the Space Explorers remained very popular for ten years. Hartmann assumed that the popularization of space flight through media like the Space Explorers influenced some members of the Baby boomer generation to take up careers in that field, who put the depicted flight around the Moon into practice in the 1960s. Telepolis journalist Marcus Hammerschmitt called The Space Explorers an instant hit, and concluded that the climate in late-1950s America must have been favorable for its reception. He counted The Space Explorers among the works by Ladd which contributed to the spread of anime in the West. Hammerschmitt also saw a parallel between the incorporation of film material produced in Nazi Germany into an American piece of media and the careers of some rocket engineers from the German Peenemünde facility who successfully continued to work at NASA.

References

External links The Space Explorers website The Space Explorers at IMDb

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Space Explorers

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Space Explorers claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Space Explorers before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Space Explorers ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Space Explorers

In research: The Space Explorers appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Space Explorers in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Space Explorers is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1950s American animated television series, 1950s American science fiction television series, 1958 American animated films, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Space Explorers outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Space Explorers in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Space Explorers means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Space Explorers out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Space Explorers in simple terms?

Why does The Space Explorers matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Space Explorers?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Space Explorers.