Synopsis:
Quite by coincidence Donald invents the powerful explosive Duckmite which also proves to be an excellent fuel!

Comments:
Barks' first space stories were more characterized by his past involved with the action-filled Disney cartoons than of his factual knowledge of journeys into Space. This is the first story, in which Donald flies a small rocket ship close to Earth. His invention, Duckmite, makes it possible for him to blast off, and this was also the case in WDCS220 'Stratosphere Turkey', in which another invention of his, Weemite, had the same effect.

Synopsis:
Donald is hired to fly the first rocket ship to the Moon but a villainous guy is also competing!

Comments:
When Donald reaches the Moon he boldly steps out into the 'air' with no protection gear, meets a 'Moonian' being who drinks nitroglycerine and splits into several minor beings! These little guys also know how a lit match can affect their health...

Synopsis:
Gyro invents an imagining machine by which one by force of thought can travel wherever he wants. Donald and the nephews pop up to Jupiter, where everything is much larger than on Earth!

Comments:
Although this story is filled with slapstick action when Donald lets his nephews encounter strange and colossal beings and objects, Barks went to great lengths to teach his readers about comparative sizes in a convincing and educational way. In the panel the nephews are scared silly by oversized chicken pox - or are our ducks just extremely small?

Synopsis:
Gyro invents an unbreakable money bin for Scrooge but when Scrooge loses the combination they have to travel to the asteroids in order to obtain a metal strong enough to open the bin...

Comments:
Although Barks primarily created his comic book stories to entertain people he was also very interested in getting things right. This meant that he was beginning to study the era's space technology in order to draw his panels as accurately as possible (of course with due respect to the comics' medium). In this story he drew several accurate renderings of the problems connected with future space travels (weightlessness is demonstrated in the panel), and you should bear in mind that the facts were not all common knowledge at the time!
In WDCS244 Missile Fizzle three years later Barks made fairly precise graphic renderings of both a rocket launch and a rocket landing...

Synopsis:
Scrooge hears of a small moon of solid gold behind the Moon. He immediately blasts off to claim the precious object. However it seems to be inhabited...

Comments:
Even this very adventurous and highly improbable story line contains several exact pieces of information about moon rockets and travel in Space, and the ducks are wearing space suits.

Synopsis:
Gyro and Gus Goose travel to a far-away planet where everybody live to relax. Just the thing for Gus but Gyro cannot bear the easygoing lifestyle...

Comments:
Gyro and Gus(!!!) are stressed and leave for a vacation on a planet behind Pluto, which is populated by Gus look-alikes. Just like that! Barks did not write this story and it shows...

Synopsis:
Scrooge decides to hide all his money on an asteroid far away from thieves. But the asteroid is inhabited...

Comments:
As the so-called Space Age progressed Barks made his space stories increasingly realistic, and in this one he introduces us to both space wheels and the asteroid belt. It was this story that earned Barks eternal immortality even beyond this planet! In 1982 Ted Bowell of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid which was officially called (2730) Barks by the Cornell University.
In a later interview Barks commented on the event: In one of my later stories, called Island in the Sky, sometime in the sixties, the ducks try to find a place to hide Uncle Scrooge's money, and they passed a bunch of these small asteroids on the way there. One of the men there at Cornell University, where they had a whole laboratory for the study of the asteroids, read that comic book and thought that was quite a thing, that these ducks could run onto a bunch of peculiar asteroids on their way to the asteroid belt.
Anyway, they thought that was pretty good. My stories made the asteroids interesting, and opened a possibility that there might even be some among them that would have a few vegetables growing on it. And so they named one of their discoveries after me. He wrote to tell me that the surface was approximately 100 hectares (nearly 250 acres or 1 square kilometer - Editor's remark) in size. In any case it would be big enough for a money bin...

Synopsis:
The ducks are blown up in the air to a nearby, small planet. It seems to be Valhalla, the home of the ancient gods!

Comments:
Of course, it is highly improbable that a 'lose' planet can orbit over Duckburg despite a passing astronomer's 'scientific explanations. Barks said: I wrote a 16-pager of Uncle Scrooge and the ducks getting blown into Valhalla - a wandering small planet that strays into the Earth's shadow. This Valhalla is peopled by dog-faces named Thor, Odin, and other names common to the Norse Gods. Also Vulcan, Jupiter, Venus, and the Latin Gods' names (read a brief description of them all HERE - Editor's remark). You'll have to read Uncle Scrooge #34 to see how I explain away such mythical anomalies with scientifically provable hogwash.
What Barks did probably not realize was that he allowed the gods to use strictly modern Earth phrases such as Hitchhiker, Hallucination, Lord, Champion, Suburb, and Kidnaping...

Synopsis:
Scrooge is talking about the folly of gold-thirsty people when it is announced that gold has been found on the Moon. Now it's every man for himself...

Comments:
The last of the Moon stories! Again, Barks demonstrates some of his genuine knowledge on the subject of Space travel, although the first manned one to the Moon was still 5 years in the future; low gravity is a very real topic both when moving around and when firing a revolver (which the villain does in the final showdown) where the recoil is multiple times stronger than on Earth...

Synopsis:
Scrooge takes over the job as postmaster in order to provide better service, but he has to deliver a letter to Venus!!!

Comments:
Barks ended his Space story 'career' with yet another combination of realism and fantasy. In this one Scrooge and Donald travel in a plausible rocketship, and they experience weightlessness on the way to Mars, which is graphically rendered in a plausible way also. The rest of the story turns into slapstick in Barks' description of the Martians as well as Venus and its inhabitants. Throughout their travels neither of the ducks care for any type of space suit...