The rocket launch depicted was in reality a test flight of a Mercury-Atlas booster. This was quite timely; this episode aired about a month after NASA's John Glenn became the first astronaut to attain Earth orbit upon such a rocket.
Both of the main actors in this episode were The Twilight Zone (1959) veterans. Joe Maross appeared in Third from the Sun (1960) (1960), and Claude Akins was in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (1960) (1960).