Faint Praise

Heinlein felt that July 20, 1969 would be a very important date in history, the start of Man as a space faring species, not just an expensive stunt to beat the Russians

I saw this video pop up on my feed and with all the spacey stuff recently on this blog I felt I had to watch it again:

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxiCIX6rp2Y

the video title => "Destination Moon (1950) is Way Better Than I Expected"  is the very definition of faint praise. :)

The "George Pal-ian" special effects were fun (I'm still not sure how they distorted their faces on takeoff), the movie tried to make the trip as accurate as old Heinlein could imagine.  The 4 astronauts even have visible beards at the end of the movie :)  The matte paintings and backgrounds were very "Bonestell-ian":

https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/04/bonestell.html

One thing they got right:  the photographs on Apollo 11 were taken with a reflex camera, a Hasselblad (SLR) - in the movie they had a twin-lens reflex but close enough.  And on Apollo they brought the film home but left the Hasselblad camera and other stuff.

One thing they got wrong:  dust, the moon dust (or Mars dust) is going to be a problem when mankind goes back to the Moon and beyond.  The movie showed what appeared to be barren rock on the surface.

There are several copies of the movie on Youtube - apparently it is no longer in copyright.

The movie is from 75 years ago, the US landed on the moon 19 years later - and we haven't been back since.  But I suspect that before my time is up there will be either US astronaut and / or Chinese Taikonauts on the moon.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm