On the Threshold of Space
On the Threshold of Space (aka Threshold of Space) is a 1956 drama directed by Robert D. Webb, starring Guy Madison, Virginia Leith and John Hodiak.[3] It was Hodiak's final film; he died six months before it was released. On the Threshold of Space provides a historical depiction of air force tests made in the United States for the imminent space race.[4]
Plot[edit]
Capt. Jim Hollenbeck (Guy Madison), a dedicated physician assigned to the space branch of the United States Air Force Medical Corps, voluntarily undergoes jump school training. He wants to better analyze the effect of parachute jumps on the human body. After jump school, Lt. Col. Masters (Walter Coy), the head of the space program, sends Jim to Sovern Air Force Base in Florida to evaluate a problematic experimental ejection seat.
While ejecting from his aircraft, test pilot Mike Bentley (Warren Stevens) broke his shoulder. Jim is assigned to determine what happened. In a test, when his arm is also broken, Jim determines that the wind blast during ejection forced his arm off the ejection release.
Once the seat mechanism is modified, a series of tests at supersonic speeds are begun with rocket sleds launched at 1,000 miles per hour. Dr. Hugh Thornton (Dean Jagger) head of the program and Jim's mentor, wants Jim to test the first balloon gondola designed to carry a man 20 miles up into the "threshold of space," the first step toward putting a man into space.
Before accepting the assignment, Jim asks his fiancée, Pat Lange (Virginia Leith) for her blessing and the couple marry but their honeymoon is cut short by the news that Col. Masters was killed in an automobile accident. Jim rushes back to the base, where Maj. Ward Thomas (John Hodiak), is the new head of the program. Thomas is more cautious and cancels Jim's high altitude balloon flight. Jim is instructed to take Lt. Morton Glenn (Martin Milner) to a height of 55,000 feet, then lower the gondola to 10,000 feet, where Glenn will parachute to earth.
The test goes badly with Glenn freezing and Jim completing the jump but is reprimanded. Meanwhile, tests proceed on the rocket sleds with crash dummies. After a dummy is decapitated, Thomas plans to test the sled himself and has assigned Jim to act as physician for the trial. At 1,000 miles per hour, the major is temporarily blinded, but soon regains his sight, and the test is proclaimed a success.
When Washington authorizes a floating high-altitude platform, Jim is assigned to the first high altitude balloon flight. Reaching 100,000 feet, his radio fails, and when he drifts over a rugged mountain range, Jim discovers that his oxygen is nearly gone, forcing him to land. While descending, his matter-of-fact reports to his supervisors relay what is happening to his body. After the gondola crashes in the mountains, a helicopter locates the balloon and finds Jim alive, but dazed.