Space Cadets - Futuristic space cadets on the children's sci-fi series TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADETS. Based in the year A.D. 2350-55, Tom Corbett (Frankie Thomas), a curly-headed teenager attended Space Academy, where he hoped to become a Rocketeer in the Solar Guards. When Tom Corbett enrolled into the academy he said "As a boy I dreamed of piloting spaceships. When I was old enough, I took all the exams and was admitted to the best school in the universe-Space Academy."

Members of Space Academy included Captain Larry Strong (Michael Harvey); Senior Space Cadet Tom Corbett; Cadet Roger Manning, the Radar Man onboard the rocket cruiser "Polaris"; Cadet Astro (Al Markim), the Venusian Navigator and prototype to the Vulcan Mr. Spock of STAR TREK; Cadet Rattison (Frank Sutton); and Dr. Joan Dale (Margaret Garland), Tom Corbett's girlfriend. Cadet Roger Manning was the creator of some unique phrases like: "You Venusian Swamp Rat!" and "Blow It Out Your Jets!" The Space Cadet insignia was an upright cigar shaped rocket with two landing fins resting on a bolt of lighting.

Unlike most of the space adventures of the 1950s which featured evil monsters, and crazed criminals/scientists, the Space Cadet plots were generally men against nature such as struggles with weightlessness, spaceships drifting in space, and visits to strange planets like the jungles and swamps of Venus. Very rarely did the Space Cadets reach for a gun, but when they did it was a Freezer ray to stop/not damage a person.

On the final episode of the series the script read: "Where are we going, Tom? Out Boy, Further than we've ever gone before!" More than a decade later, the sci-fi series STAR TREK/NBC/1966-69 opened with the narration "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no man has gone before!"

TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET was based on the Robert Heinlein novel "Space Cadet". The series was produced as a fifteen-minute (seen three times a week) show on CBS and ABC; the NBC and DuMont versions (1950-55) were extended to half-hour shows and aired on Saturday mornings. See also - OATHS & PLEDGES - "I solemnly swear to safeguard..."