DIMENSION X - The Outer Limit (Graham Doar)

DIMENSION X
The Outer Limit
April 08, 1950
Graham Doar first published his short story The Outer Limit in The Saturday Evening Post on December 24, 1949. The story tells of a military test pilot who goes up in an experimental rocket ship the day before tests are scheduled for a cosmic ray bomb. Doar captured the zeitgeist of Cold War America and his story went viral. It was adapted for radio several times besides this Dimension X episode -- on February 15, 1954 for Suspense and on November 16, 1955 for X Minus One among others. The story was also adapted for Television and produced on Out There hosted by Donald Davis, airing on CBS October 28, 1951; Robert Montgomery Presents also adapted a version of the story which was aired on January 26, 1953. There is a Twilight Zone version, and many movies can be traced to the ideas Doar explored.
HISTORICAL GLOSSARY
A cosmic ray is a high-energy high-speed particle that originates in space. It can penetrate, or go through, most all substances. Showers of them reach the Earth periodically and in 1946 both the US and the Soviet Union started programs to research them. In 1949 a theory was presented that exploding stars, supernovas, acted as a cosmic accelerator for these rays. This was during the Cold War and the research in this field was being applied to weapons development. So in the context of this story the fictional cosmic ray bomb (also referred to as CR bomb in the story) would be the type of super-weapon that came next after atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, and nuclear bombs.
When describing the importance of Steve's mission, Hank says, "Don't worry. In the long run, our ship will make the CR bomb back-page stuff." Newspapers placed articles that covered events of little importance towards the back pages of their publications, so Hank is implying that when the public learns of the success of Steve's flight into outer space they will find it more important than news of the bomb test.
Hank says "...half the principles on this ship are pure theory, Steve; slide rule stuff." A slide rule is a mechanical calculator.
Steve asks Hank to tell his wife, Mary, that he is not doing anything dangerous. He says, "Look, if Mary calls, I'm just up on a milk run." The idiom "milk run" refers to a simple easy task. If you were a milk truck driver in 1950 (not home delivery, but the hauler) you would pick up milk from producers and take it to a factory where it would be bottled. The milk would be pumped from a vat into your tanker. You wouldn't have to load anything onto your truck, just sit there while a machine did the work. Your counterpart who was driving a cabbage truck had to load all those heavy cabbages onto his truck, and struggle to drive carefully over rutted roads so the produce didn't bounce around getting bruised, meanwhile your milk was safely in a tank and you didn't have to worry about it, nor did you have to worry about theft of your product if you stopped for lunch at a roadside diner. Doing a milk run was easy.
When Steve's aircraft goes missing Elsie asks, "He couldn't have bailed out, could he?" Hank replies, "You don't hit the silk at forty four hundred miles an hour." Parachutes were originally made of silk fabric so to "hit the silk" is to open your parachute.
When Steve first returns to Earth and is about to talk to Hank he says, "Have the Geiger men run over the ship before they refuel." A Geiger counter is an electronic instrument that detects and measures radiation. So a "Geiger man" would be someone who works with Geiger counters.

[@roelienpostma2367]

Thank you for this insight into this history/ future!

[@sandeakilpatrick2386]

Great science fiction!

[@insights2reality100]

Thanks! I will be posting more and appreciate you watching them :)