Alan Carter (Space 1999)

Alan Carter
Space: 1999 character
Nick Tate as Captain Alan Carter
Portrayed by	Nick Tate
Date of birth	19 December 1966, New South Wales, Australia
Home planet	Earth
Affiliation	Moonbase Alpha
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Posting	14 June 1999, fourth tour of duty on Moonbase Alpha
Rank	Captain, chief Eagle pilot
Section	Reconnaissance

Alan Carter is a fictional character from the television series Space: 1999. He was played by Nick Tate. He is of Australian origin and is in his early thirties.

Head of the Reconnaissance Section and the chief Eagle pilot of Moonbase Alpha, Captain Alan Carter was on his fourth tour of duty when the Moon broke away from Earth in September 1999.

Having grown up on a cattle ranch in Australia, Carter's major talents were horsemanship and surfing. Fit and athletic, he was proficient at rugby; he owned the football used in the Australia-Great Britain game Swinton, 1963 with Harrison's signature (his grandfather played on Harrison's team). He claims it was his inability to start a campfire that got him 'drummed out of the Boy Scouts'.

His fondest dream and greatest love was flying. As a teenager he flew his family's private plane. As a young man he joined the Australian Air Force. He joined the space programme in the early 1980s and trained with NASA until the late '80s. Afterwards he became an astronaut in the U.S./Australian Space Co-operation Program (1994). Somewhere at this time, he won the Houston Base boxing championship against friend and fellow Australian astronaut Ken Burdett. Three years later he was the third man to go to Mars and a year after that crewed on a flight to Venus. In 1996, Carter became a member of Moonbase Alpha, having successfully tested the Eagle Transporter and Mark IX Hawk.

At the time of the Moon's breakaway from Earth in September 1999, Alan Carter's main responsibility was co-ordinating the launch of the Meta Probe from the orbital Space Dock. After the probe was launched Carter would receive telemetry and other flight data on Moonbase Alpha. (This same task was performed by now-Commander Koenig during the Ultra Probe Mission of 1996.) Despite his position on the senior staff, Carter was not informed of the mysterious nature of the astronaut deaths by previous Alpha Commander Gorski in "Breakaway" and believed the 'virus infection' cover story until set straight by new Commander John Koenig.