I found this a pretty fascinating watch nearly 70 years later in 2022.

Firstly, I think it's good to see how people thought about things in a different time, rather than only exposing myself to media created by those in a narrow age band from myself.

Second, as a software engineer I like seeing how other people approach difficult technical problems and this did not disappoint. There was a ton of work and decades of preparation that went into making space flight a reality, as this illustrates. It's interesting to compare that to current difficult problems like self-driving cars or visiting Mars, for example.

I also learned some about the history of rocketry that I didn't know before, and it was cool to see the early scientists (mostly "imported" from Germany) describing their plans. More surprisingly I actually learned a bit about space that I didn't know, for example the bit about how the atmosphere on a space station doesn't circulate well (though it makes sense once you think about it).

The coolest thing is that even though space travel was still a decade away, they were almost completely correct in their descriptions of what it would be like. (The one thing that seemed wrong was the claim that in the vacuum of space you'd boil on one side from the Sun and freeze on the other, though your blood would boil from the vacuum)

This is more for adults than kids even though it's partly a cartoon. There's a graphical caricature of Asians early on that most people would consider racist today (in the illustrators' partial defense most of their characters are fairly whimsical). Also the main cartoon character is constantly smoking a cigar, and as the TV rating agency might say the episode "contains dangerous and explosive situations" haha.

Anyway, worth a watch I think.

Oh, where are you going, my little one, little one...

Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four...

I remember these shows when they were first broadcast on Disneyland. I remember sitting there, electrified by Werner Van Braune's explanations of rocket science. I watched as history, science and humor were all interwoven in an engrossing story of possibilities.

That was fifty years ago. And the shows are back in the Disney Treasures series, and what a treasure they are. I watched them last night and tonight with my 8 year old daughter, who at first would not even come in the room, but later changed her mind when she saw they were partly animated. As she watched I watched her, and by the end she was nearly as engrossed as I had been.

Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own...

Sure, some of the predictions about reaching the moon were wrong. But there is a lot of information that is still quite accurate, and the overall presentation is still impressive. I found myself thinking my daughter's teacher might want to show them to her class, not only as a 50 year old artifact, but also as fun and easy to understand lessons in history.

Turn around, turn around, turn around and again...you're wondering how much has really changed in 50 years.