The series depicts future efforts by the United States Air Force to explore and develop outer space.

Some props were futuristic (such as a forerunner of today's real-life LCD TVs), but the show's Earth clothing and environs, including automobiles, telephones, and other machines, were decidedly late 1950s.

The program aired in the year just prior to the beginning of human spaceflight, with Vostok 1 and the Project Mercury launching crewed spacecraft in 1961.

For example, a scientist-astronaut stricken with a coronary thrombosis while exploring the Moon was not expected to survive the G-forces of the return flight, so his comrades stowed the space-suited patient in a steel drum filled with water, to cushion him during launch.

Visual backdrops and conceptual designs of spacecraft, space stations, and a Moon base depended somewhat on contributions from notable astronomical and science fiction artist Chesley Bonestell.

[5] It evoked the earlier Disney space exploration documentaries, which in turn owed their look and feel to a widely read, early 1950s series on the subject in the old Collier's Weekly magazine, where Bonestell's art also held sway.

In two different episodes, the series even speculated about exo-fossil extraterrestrial life discovered while exploring a distant asteroid and about ancient Earth-orbiting spaceship debris belonging to a non-human, space-faring civilization.

The spacecraft in the program were shown gliding to a powerless landing on a dry lake bed, just like the real Space Shuttle nearly 25 years later.

[3] On the other hand, dramatic license held sway on soundtracks, which repeatedly depicted sound in the airless vacuum of space: airlocks hummed, rockets roared, explosions boomed, and footsteps on the Moon's surface could be heard.

Other guest stars include James Best, Whit Bissell, Paul Burke, James Coburn, Paul Comi, James Drury, Joe Flynn, Arthur Franz, Nancy Gates, Allison Hayes, Murray Hamilton, Brett King, Werner Klemperer, Gavin MacLeod, Joe Maross, Donald May, Bek Nelson, Simon Oakland, Denver Pyle, Robert Reed, William Schallert, Warren Stevens, Marshall Thompson, Harry Townes, and Robert Vaughn.