Man Overboard!
May, 1953

Next to being hit by meteors, floating away from one's spacecraft during a spacewalk was one of the most frequently imagined hazards of space travel as conceived by people in the fifties. Graphically dramatized in the film Destination Moon, such an exotic accident captured the public imagination and turned up in numerous SF stories about space exploration. This agoraphobic nightmare of drifting off into empty infinity, portrayed here by artist Mel Hunter, practically came true during NASA's Gemini IV mission when astronaut Ed White became almost too exhausted to reenter his spacecraft during America's first EVA in 1965.

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