20 1900s-1950s Spaceships of Science Fiction IN THE FUTURE OF 1953, A FEMALE ASTRONAUT’S JOB STILL INCLUDED COOKING AND CLEARING AWAY AFTERWARDS Six months ago, in January 1973, the first spaceship to travel to the planet Mars cracked up on landing. When the rescue ship arrives, only one person from the original crew remains alive. The rescuers dismiss his story of a creature which attacked and killed everyone else during a sandstorm on the planet, and prepare to take him back to Earth to face a court martial, swiftly followed by a firing squad. But the monster is real, and has found its way onto the spaceship... With its story of a monster trapped aboard an in-flight spaceship gradually picking off the crew one by one the film is often cited as being one of the major influences upon Alien, and writer Jerome Bixby went on to work on some of the most acclaimed episodes of the original Star Trek. The Challenge 142 The ship is equipped with artificial gravity and arranged vertically over several levels. Inside, It! The Terror from Beyond Space -1958 metal struts with holes punched out of them hold the ship together. As the monster closes in upon them and they find their weapons useless against it, the space travellers are forced to retreat upwards towards the control center at the top of the rocketship. Several airlocks are accessible from its different levels, which allows a spacewalk down the side of the craft in an attempt to get beneath the creature and attack it unawares. In many ways, the Challenge 142 is the classic 1950s spaceship – a Single-Stage-To- Orbit rocket, landing and taking off from its tail with a chrome exterior, three landing fins, and no less than three atomic power plants to provide energy to the ship. THE CREATURE, PLAYED BY RAY CORRIGAN, SEARCHES FOR A WAY INTO THE AIRLOCK
