The 1950 motion picture Destination Moon is in several aspects an odd duck.\u00a0 It was an independent production under George Pal\u2019s control.\u00a0 He worked with Robert A Heinlein to adapt his novel Rocket Ship Galileo into a screen play.\u00a0 In point of fact the plot changes involved make the movie and the book completely different stories. \u00a0For Pal who would go on to make such sci-fi classics as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and When Worlds Collide this was a chance to make a realistic space flight movie with Heinlein providing the scientific accuracy.<\/p>\n
After a government project to build an advanced rocket motor is sabotaged and abandoned a plan is hatched to overcome the loss of government funding in rocket design by recruiting patriotic business leaders to pool their resources to pay for and build a Moon rocket.\u00a0 General Thayer and Dr. Charles Cargraves were the moving force behind the earlier government project and Jim Barnes is the principal industrialist who uses his aircraft design facilities to build the atomic powered rocket.\u00a0 Along with Joe Sweeney who provides radio and communication expertise (along with Brooklyn-accented comic relief) these men will be the crew to travel back and forth to the Moon.<\/p>\n
When local bureaucracy threatens to tie up the launch in the courts, the team decides to launch immediately.\u00a0 Just as the sheriffs are arriving to serve the launch injunction the crew is riding the elevator up to the cockpit.\u00a0 The ship takes off and the crew gets to experience the pain of eight gee take off acceleration and the nausea associated with zero gravity conditions.\u00a0 Shortly after taking off they discover the need to do a space walk to repair equipment.\u00a0 One of the astronauts carelessly allows his magnetic boots to become separated from the ship\u2019s hull while not holding onto his tether and begins floating away from the ship.\u00a0 One of his mates has to use an oxygen cylinder as a makeshift rocket to rendezvous with the lost man and bring him back.<\/p>\n
As the rocket approaches the Moon, errors in the navigation (or should I say astrogation) force the crew to expend to much reaction mass from the rocket to land in their planned destination.\u00a0 Mission control on Earth begins calculating how much weight must be removed from the ship to balance the reduced capacity of the ship\u2019s fuel load.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the crew investigates the Moon.\u00a0 The first thing they do is claim the Moon for the United States (for the good of all mankind).\u00a0 Using a Geiger counter General Thayer discovers large deposits of uranium.\u00a0 Later on, one of the astronauts takes a picture of Joe Sweeney holding his arm up in such away that it looks like he is holding up Earth in the sky behind him.<\/p>\n
The calculations on the fuel are distressing.\u00a0 The ship has to be lightened by over a ton.\u00a0 The crew starts removing everything that isn\u2019t required to get the ship back to Earth.\u00a0 But even after sawing off any metal components of the ship that can be removed, they\u2019re still short by one hundred ten pounds.<\/p>\n
Barnes, Cargraves and Thayer realize that someone has to stay behind and each one of them tries to convince the other two that he is the one to stay based on authority, age or responsibility.\u00a0 Meanwhile Sweeney takes it upon himself to take the last space suit and leave the ship.\u00a0 He tells them to leave without him.\u00a0 But Barnes figures out a trick to get them below the weight limit.\u00a0 With a rat-tailed file Sweeney puts a notch in the outer door frame of the air lock.\u00a0 A heavy oxygen cylinder is hung outside the ship from a line that runs through the notch in the door.\u00a0 With the door closed the airlock is pressurized with only a slow leak from the notch.\u00a0 Then Sweeney ties the space suit to the other end of the line.\u00a0 Once Sweeney reenters the ship the outer door is opened and the weight of the cylinder drags the space suit out the door.\u00a0 Then the ship launches back to Earth.<\/p>\n
And the movie ends with the words THE END followed by \u201cof the Beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Destination Moon is a landmark.\u00a0 It is the first reasonably accurate portrayal of actual space flight.\u00a0 Coming nineteen years before Apollo 11 it is remarkably realistic.\u00a0 Now as cinema it definitely isn\u2019t King Lear or even King Kong but it\u2019s excellent propaganda for a space program.\u00a0 And it does contain all the correct tropes of the time.\u00a0 If you are a sci-fi fan this movie is a must see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 1950 motion picture Destination Moon is in several aspects an odd duck.\u00a0 It was an independent production under George Pal\u2019s control.\u00a0 He worked with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237,4,243],"tags":[92,43,38,1355,711,44,265],"class_list":["post-7722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-heinlein","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n