Space Episode

Fred: This is the coolest thing we've ever done! Did you ever think we'd be flying the Mystery Machine... in space?
Shaggy: (shrugs) Like, it was bound to happen eventually.

— Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, "In Space"

The story is mostly or totally terrestrially grounded; though there may be space travel, it's not a setting where going into space is a regular or easy task and likely none of the main characters has gone into space — until now. Maybe just one of them will go up as a means of putting them on a bus or maybe the whole cast goes up for an episode, but it happens only once or twice for the entire run of the story.

Compare Recycled In Space, which technically doesn't have to do with anything about space.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In one of the later episodes of the second season of Assassination Classroom, the whole class orchestrates a rocket hijacking so Nagisa and Karma can visit a space station and steal valuable scientific data that could save Koro-sensei's life. The astronauts end up just giving it to them.

Asian Animation

• The Simple Samosa episode "Space Snax" takes the characters to space to get the sun burning again when it goes out.

Comic Books

• Tintin: The stories "Destination Moon" and its follow-up "Explorers on the Moon".
• Wonder Woman (1987): While somewhat casual space travel is the norm for several DC characters Diana is mostly earth-bound. The "Journey to the Stars with Wonder Woman" arc has her catapulted out of the Solar system by sabotaged New Genesis tech and captured by a galactic evil empire, before leading a revolution to free the Empire's slaves.

Comic Strips

• An early Bloom County arc had Ma and Pa Bloom stumble into a NASA craft while trying to get to Disney World.

Films — Animated

• Out of the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Film Series, the third film, Moon Castle: The Space Adventure, focuses on the goats going into space, specifically to the moon to prevent the Bitter Gourd King from making it bitter.

Literature

• In the book (but not the movie) Forrest Gump, Forrest briefly becomes an astronaut.
• The Last Hero puts three Discworld characters (Rincewind, Carrot and Leonard of Quirm) on The Kite, the Disc's first powered spacecraft.

Films — Live-Action

• Abbott And Costello Go To Mars: The title says it all, really, as the pair launch into space to visit Mars, only to end up on Venus by mistake.
• Jason X: The film, set in the distant future, involves people from Earth II returning to the original Earth on a field trip and taking a cryogenically frozen Jason — unaware of the danger he presents — back into space with them.
• Moonraker is the space episode of the James Bond series.
• The Three Stooges in Orbit

Live-Action TV

• Howard on The Big Bang Theory has an arc in which he goes to the International Space Station.
• In The Teaser to one episode of Get Smart Da Chief and Max have a quick meeting on the moon, saying that now that NASA has reached the moon they'll have to find another place to hold their top-secret meetings.
• Played with on the episode of Community "Basic Rocket Science": the study group is not going to space, but they are trapped inside of a space simulator that has been towed away and the only way it will let them get out is if they complete the simulated mission, which leads to almost every other possible "space mission gone wrong" trope (including Space Madness) being played straight.
• The Goodies are put in charge of the British space program in "Invasion of the Moon Creatures".
• NewsRadio did a "what if" episode that took place in space.
• Larry on NUMB3RS goes to the ISS for several months.
• Seven Days has an episode where a space station crash results in the on-board radioactive material causing hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be poisoned. The Sphere is modified for space travel, and Parker is sent back to just before the disaster. He docks with the space station and attempts to help (without any orbital training, mind you). The episode has a Bittersweet Ending, though. The day is saved, but all astronauts die, usually via Heroic Sacrifice.

Music

• "Dans L'Espace" by Bebe Lilly shows her and her stuffed friends traveling to space to have a race and then a dance party in its music video.

Video Games

• The mission "Zero Gravity" in Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere marks the single time in the entire series that the player was allowed out of the atmosphere.
• Angry Birds Space re-creates the game with an outer space motif, changing the birds and their abilities and introducing new challenges like gravity wells.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Expansion Pack "Yuri's Revenge" featured a mission on the moon.
• Final Fantasy VIII has several of the characters briefly travel to a space station.
• In the iOS game Highborn, the last mission of chapter 2 takes place on the moon.
• The Mega Man (Classic) series has Mega Man go into space a few times, but Mega Man 3 and Mega Man V had him do so for most of it (not that you could tell from playing the former outside of Gemini Man's stage).
• Moshi Monsters: The missions "Masters of the Swooniverse" through to "Cosmic Countdown" take place in space.
• Both No One Lives Forever games had space station levels.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Chapter 7 of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario heads to the Moon, as the X-Nauts' base is there.
  • Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • Mario would travel into space again in Super Paper Mario: Chapter 4's door leads into open space, and the bulk of the chapter consists of Mario attempting to find solid ground.
• World 9 of Super Monkey Ball 2 is set in outer space, outside a space colony. World 10 is set inside it.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order sends BJ on a one-level jaunt to go fight Nazis on the Moon. Even he finds this a bit surreal. The sequel, as part of its commitment to Sequel Escalation, sent him to fight Nazis on Venus.

Web Comics

• In Kevin & Kell there was an early arc where Lindesfarne (and Rudy who stowed away) go to the ISS.
• Hannelore in Questionable Content lived her early years on a space station with her supergenius father, but for Marigold and Marten her invitation is their first and possibly only time.

Web Videos

• Rats SMP: The third and last part of the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60 takes the rats on a trip to the Moon in the "Future", where they have to stop the intelligent cats' Doomsday Device from destroying the Earth and turning an Class 3 Apocalypse How situation into a Class X one.
• Stampy's Lovely World: Episodes 85, "Trip to the Moon" and 474, "Christmas in Space" both involve Stampy travelling to the Moon.
• Wonder Quest: In Episode 4, Stampy and Keen set off across the Solar System to find the first Wonderment, and find a stranded alien in the process.

Western Animation

• The 101 Dalmatians: The Series episode "Out to Launch" has the pups hijack Cruella's spaceship and fly it into Earth's orbit.
• In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Spaceman Sonic", Dr. Robotnik sends Scratch and Grounder to outer space in a rocket to mine a radioactive mineral from asteroids, so that he can use it to power an army of giant robots to conquer Mobius with. Sonic and Tails stow away onboard their rocket ship to stop them, and the four come to an abandoned space station, where they have an encounter with a sick and hungry slime monster.
• Aquaman once had NASA commission Aquaman to stop a war on a water planet between the Quatix and the Bimphars, who fought over their home's only patch of land.
• The Cars Toons "UFM: Unidentified Flying Mater" and "Moon Mater".
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers go into space in one episode to save an endangered crew of astronauts.
• Curious George has multiple episodes where George and the Man with the Yellow Hat go to space.
  • In “Curious George's Rocket Ride" George must go to space. This is because The Man with the Yellow Hat cannot go because it was designed for a four-handed pilot. So he must fix the system that releases the goods for the station.
  • In "Grease Monkeys in Space" George must go to space to fix the space telescope.
• There were three episodes of the second season of Inspector Gadget where Gadget had to go into space to stop MAD.
• Most MacGuffins in Jackie Chan Adventures are earthbound — however, one of them is a demon portal located at the halfway point between the Earth and the Moon, and the episode is about Jackie trying to reach it before his adversaries do.
• In the Jimmy Two-Shoes episode "Rocket Jimmy", Jimmy sneaks on to Lucius' rocket to fulfill his dream of going to the Moon while Lucius wants to defeat a supposed moon monster. To put it simply, it does not go well for Lucius thanks to Jimmy's antics.
• The Kaeloo episode "Let's Play Astronauts" had the main four go to outer space to find a star so Stumpy could name it after his girlfriend to celebrate their two-week anniversary. The events of the episode turn out to be All Just a Dream.
• Despite the fact that it's a show starring aliens as most of the leads, Lilo & Stitch: The Series only had one episode actually set in space. "The Asteroid" sees Lilo, Stitch, Jumba, and Pleakley going out into space to destroy a huge asteroid from colliding with Earth, only to find an alien squatter living on it.
• The Magic Key: “Lug And The Giant Storks”, wherein Kipper and Wilma (and Floppy) find themselves transported to another planet and having to contend with giant Space Storks.
• Muttley daydreams he's an astronaut sent to explore a planet ruled by Dick Dastardly in "Astromutt", a Magnificent Muttley installment.
• Phineas and Ferb have gone into space multiple times — "Out to Launch", "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)", "The Chronicles of Meap", "Meapless in Seattle", "Moon Farm", and, arguably, Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars. And those are just the ones primarily set in space - plenty of episodes see the kids go back and forth.
• The Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer" has Homer and Barney both selected for astronaut training. Homer is ultimately sent into space (and makes the mission fail, of course).
• Both "Starvin' Marvin in Space" and "Cancelled" of South Park involve the main characters going to extra terrestrial worlds.
  Stan: My God, do you guys realize? This is only the second time we've ever been in outer space.
  Kyle: Yeah.
  Kenny: Awesome.
  Cartman: This is like my fifth time.
• SpongeBob SquarePants In the episode "Sandy's Rocket", SpongeBob and Patrick interfere with Sandy's plans to fly to the moon. That may be why she is wary of bringing him along in the season 8 episode "Mooncation".
• Tom and Jerry: In "Mouse Into Space", Jerry joins a space program in order to get away from Tom, who keeps tormenting him. Tom accidentally ends up in the same rocket as Jerry, but the mouse escapes unscratched once again.
• Viva Piñata: "The Wrong Stuff", where Pester kidnaps Hudson, who's rescued by Langston, Paulie, Fergy, and Franklin, in SPACE!
• God Rocks! Starlight Rescue!, the series finale of God Rocks! BibleToons, has the characters going into space to stop an evil star named Evil Darkon from taking the other stars' light for himself.
• Nature Cat: In "Outerspace Detectives", the gang visits the moon to investigate when a monster is being suspected to eat it. There isn't one; it's just a lunar eclipse, but the gang learns about how a lunar eclipse happens when they go on the mission.

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