Space Patrol is an American science fiction adventure series set in the 30th century that was originally aimed at juvenile audiences via television, radio, and comic books.

[2] The stories followed the 30th-century adventures of Commander-in-Chief Buzz Corry (Ed Kemmer) of the United Planets Space Patrol and his young sidekick Cadet Happy (Lyn Osborn), as they faced interplanetary villains with diabolical schemes.

Many of the ads for corporate sponsor Ralston Purina's Chex cereals used the show's space opera motif in their pitches.

[citation needed] While the radio series lacked the sophistication of sci-fi shows like the later X Minus One, it was enjoyed as a throwback to the Golden Age of space opera popularized in the 1930s by pioneering magazine editor Hugo Gernsback.

The episodes included such personalities as Ray Bolger, Gene Barry, Bill Baldwin, Lee Van Cleef, I. Stanford Jolley, Robert Shayne, William Schallert, Richard Devon, Carleton Young and Ed Nelson.

Space Patrol's creator was William "Mike" Moser, a World War II veteran United States naval aviator.

In frequent interviews such as one given to Time magazine in March 1952, Moser stated that he developed the series idea while flying across the Pacific.

[15] Glen Denning was originally cast in the lead as Commander-in-Chief Kit Corry and comedian Lyn Osborn as the youthful sidekick Cadet Happy.

The actors' tasks were increasingly difficult because they faced the complexity of coordinating their on-camera movements with intricate special effects,[17] which also had to be created live and in real-time.

For example, pistols that shot invisible rays necessitated pre-positioning small electrically wired explosive charges on the surface they were supposed to strike.

An actor would aim the prop ray gun at that location and squeeze the trigger, whereupon a special effects worker off-scene would throw the detonation switch.

A practical videotape system was not available until after Space Patrol's run, so for distribution to distant stations the image on a small, bright TV monitor was filmed using a motion picture camera with a specially modified and synchronized shutter mechanism, creating kinescope recordings on 16 mm or 35 mm film.

Moser's plans for another, more adult-oriented sci-fi series called Report to Earth never came to fruition as the result of his sudden death.

Buzz Corry is played by Ed Kemmer, Cadet Happy by Lyn Osborn, Gaff Carter by Roy Engel, and Carol Carlyle by Virginia Hewitt; the narrator is Dick Tufeld, and the Control Tower voice is Norman Jolley.

Jean-Noel Bassior authored an extensive book in 2005 titled Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television.

[26] Actor Ed Kemmer attended many of the important film festivals during the late 90s and early 2000s and discovered a renewed Space Patrol popularity that continued up until the time of his death in 2004.

[27] The emergence of electronic media during the 1990s permitted a greater interchange of Space Patrol merchandise that heretofore had been closely held by collectors.