# Orbit Jet

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The ***Orbit Jet*** was a fictional [spaceship](/source/Spacecraft) in the 1954 [TV series](/source/TV_series) *[Rocky Jones, Space Ranger](/source/Rocky_Jones,_Space_Ranger)*. It strongly resembled a [V-2 rocket](/source/V-2_rocket) in overall form, with a very prominent exhaust plume when flying, but had wings in addition to tail fins (even its radio call sign, "XV-2" relates it to that [seminal](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/seminal) [World War II](/source/World_War_II) design). There were references in the dialog to the engines being "atomic". The *Orbit Jet* had a crew of two (pilot and copilot), but often had three or four others on board depending on the mission and destination. It often flew from Earth to inhabited moons of [Jupiter](/source/Jupiter) and [Saturn](/source/Saturn), which it seemed to reach in hours or days of time within the story.

Later in the series, another ship, the *Silver Moon*, was used, but it appeared almost identical to the *Orbit Jet*.

The *Orbit Jet* introduced many features that would become standard equipment on later TV and movie spaceships:

- An electronic viewscreen (instead of a simple window or porthole)
- A fantastically complicated control panel (*without* an airplane-styled control wheel or stick)
- Power doors opening side-to-side as one approaches
- [Subspace](/source/Hyperspace_(science_fiction)) radio (the "Astrophone") that allowed instantaneous communications over interplanetary distances
- Artificial gravity as an explained feature and plot element
- Tractor beams
- Personal communicators (very similar to the pen communicators used later on [The Man From U.N.C.L.E.](/source/The_Man_from_U.N.C.L.E.))
- A [cloaking](/source/Cloaking) device that rendered the ship invisible.

## References

- [John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV: CULT TV FLASHBACK # 18: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: "Escape Into Space"](https://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2006/01/cult-tv-flashback-18-rocky-jones-space.html)
- [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=6018](http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=6018)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Orbit Jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_Jet) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_Jet?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.