XY-21

XY-21 is the model number to a fictiona spacecraft featured in the 1957 sci-fi creature feature, 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Description & History
In the late 1950s, the American government launched the first manned expedition to the planet Venus aboard a space vessel known as the XY-21. Expedition leader Colonel Robert Calder and a crew of seventeen astronauts and scientists made the twenty-million mile journey and collected mineral samples to bring back to Earth. One of the samples was a viscous fluid, which contained a Venusian life form in an embryonic state. It was Calder's hope that by studying the life form, scientists might be able to determine a way to make life on Venus possible for people from Earth. Thirteen months later, the XY-21 made its return voyage back to Earth, but its course was diverted after it was struck by a passing meteor. Rather than returning to the United States, the ship crash-landed in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily. A passing fisherman and a young boy named Pepe found the XY-21 and helped the survivors make it back to shore.