Tom Corbett, Space Cadet

Tom Corbet, Space Cadet was a radio, television, comic book, and book character inspired by the classic Heinlein novel Space Cadet. He was very popular with youngsters in the early 1950s .

"The stories followed the adventures of Tom Corbett, Astro, and Roger Manning, cadets at the Space Academy as they train to become members of the elite Solar Guard. The action takes place at the Academy in classrooms and bunkroom, aboard their training ship the rocket cruiser Polaris, and on alien worlds, both within our solar system and in orbit around nearby stars." - Wikipedia.




In 1952, Tom Corbett ran as a radio series concurrent with the television series, with mostly the same cast. Nearly all the episodes are available in free MP3 downloads from the Internet Archive. Some episodes are Here and many more are Here. Also available is an audio interview with the stars of the show Here.

There were eight Tom Corbet books published in the 1950s, seven of which are in the public domain. These are available from Manybooks.net with an overview and individual links in the QD post Here.


Comic Books. There were eight Tom Corbet, Space Cadet comic books published by Dell in 1953 and three by Prize in 1955. Golden Age Comics has three of the Dell comics here and two of the Prize comics here, for download in CBZ/CBR format. Golden Age Comics does require a free membership to eliminate excessive downloads (they allow 1 gigabyte a day).




And the Medium for which Tom Corbett is best remembered, television. Below are two scenes to capture the feel of this series from long ago.




For much, much more about Tom Corbett, check out the Tom Corbett Home Page.

and below is a classic ad for a Tom Corbett Space Helmet - click to enlarge.