I wonder how many other Star Kids remember the CBS television movie
Stowaway to the Moon, which aired in January of 1975? Like any other kid obsessed with space travel, I also collected NASA memorabilia, and had models of the space shuttle, astronaut figurines, and even a really cool Apollo-styled plastic space helmet. I clipped articles about Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. And when I saw that there was a movie (and a book, by
William R. Shelton) about a kid my age going into space... well, I had to watch it.
11-year old space nut E.J. (Michael Link), who probably had all the same books and toys I did, manages to sneak onto a NASA moon mission, and his presence causes all of the difficulties you'd imagine it would. The film co-starred
Lloyd Bridges, John Carradine, Keene Curtis (
Strange New World), and real-life Gemini and Apollo astronaut
Charles Peter Conrad as a news commentator.
I don't remember the movie itself too clearly (I'm pretty sure it was cobbled together with NASA stock footage and some cheap, oversized Apollo capsule mock-ups), but I
do remember re-enacting the climax of the movie with some fellow Cub Scouts at our meeting that week. I also remember finding a copy of the novel it was based on in our school library and checking it out several times.
I know that the entire movie is available online, and maybe one of these days, I'll watch it again...
