What happens
Radio reporter Harry Anders covers the case of Lieutenant Rev McMillan, an Air Force pilot whose experimental rocket has failed to return to base and who is stranded in orbit with no fuel. Anders recalls the pilot from his college and Air Force days and follows the nation's frantic rescue effort, including hearings in Washington, a prayer service, and a city-wide blackout timed to the ship's passage. The series X Minus One and its 1956 broadcast on NBC are presented in the transcript, which adapts James E. Gunn's story The Cave of Night. The transcript covers only the opening portion of the episode, so the full story and its final developments are not described here.
The United States in the near future, including Goddard Rocket Base in New Mexico, Washington D.C., New York, and Kansas City, during a rocket rescue effort.
Characters: Harry Anders, Rev McMillan, Mike Bayless, General Borregard Finch, Senator Alan J. Hagest, Bill, Colonel Arthur J. Hannick
Listen for: The line 'There's a man up there where no man has ever been. He is lost in the cave of night,' and the broadcast reports from the rescue effort.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.