By Rocket to the Moon!

You heard the man. Better get aboard.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

You’re listening to By Rocket To the Moon, a Young People’s Record from 1950. The music was composed by Raymond Scott, Ralph Comargo is the narrator and while no credit is given for the lyrics of the accompanying songs, they were sung by the Gene Lowell chorus.

The first lunar orbit would take place 18 years after this recording. In December of 1968, Frank Borman, William Anders and James Lovell Jr completed ten revolutions around the moon and returned home all in under a week.

Listen to the whole recording here.

Image Credit: NASA “A new chapter in space flight began in July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla: the Bumper 2, an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a Corporal rocket. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 250 miles, higher than the International Space Station’s orbit.

Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, Bumper 2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. The rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Seven years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II, the first satellites into Earth orbit.”