It was, in the best science fiction tradition, an escape into an impossible future… a future also apparently freed from the laws of physics, since this moon could hop around the universe like the starship Enterprise, surfing space-warps and using gravity slingshots to encounter ‘strange new worlds’ every week (!). The series only ran 2 years (1975-1977) and I used to first catch it in late night syndication and later on in the afternoons. Helena Russell (Landau’s then-real life wife Barbara Bain), and the crew of Moonbase Alpha’s adventures to revel in, courtesy of ITC Entertainment. The prospects for a future moonbase these days seem far less inevitable than they did in my childhood.Īs a consolation prize? My adolescent self had the fictitious adventures of Commander John Koenig (the late Martin Landau), Dr. While the fictional Moonbase Alpha was fully operational in the series’ year 1999, it was clear that the actual year 1999 wouldn’t see anything near that level of ambition in NASA’s space program, not even with the help of Russia, China and the ESA combined. Apollo’s replacement, the reusable space shuttle orbiter, never quite succeeded at making space travel as inexpensive or routine as promised, nor did it capture the popular imagination. The momentum of the Apollo lunar landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s fizzled and died not long after the program ended. In the real 1999, we had the International Space Station in orbit, which, at the time, consisted of little more than a couple of modules linked together (and manned with a crew of three)… hardly a six-sectioned moonbase with a crew of 311. At that time, a lunar base seemed inevitable… now, it seems like a forgotten dream. These events were forever consigned to the alternate-future of Gerry Anderson’s mid-1970s space epic TV show, “Space: 1999.” Apollo 11 at Mare Tranquilitatis, aka ‘Tranquility Base,’ July 20, 1969. For instance, the moon did not break away from Earth orbit on September 13th, nor did it see an International Lunar Finance Commission crew stranded on Moonbase Alpha to fend for themselves as they galavanted across the cosmos. Many things didn’t happen that year as well. There was also the tragic shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, which initiated an unending chain of deadly mass shootings in the United States. Many things happened that year I got married, a friend of ours had a baby, and my wife and I hate-watched “The Phantom Menace” theatrically more times than I care to admit. Well, the actual 1999 has come and gone… twenty years ago, in fact. Helena Russell, John Koenig and Paul Morrow man a trashed command center in “War Games.” It was a year that promised much in a shiny new millennium. One of the most popular songs when I was in high school was “Party Like It’s 1999,” from the late pop star Prince (still sad that I have to say ‘late’). It was a year that seemed poised on the cusp of greatness. When I was a kid, 1999 was a year of a far-off future where we’d have flying cars, robots in every home, and of course, moonbases.
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