graham-167

Destination Moon is known for being one of the first 'realistic' depictions of what space travel would be like. It is pretty good in that respect, though far from perfect. Yes, it gets rocket physics right, shows no sound in a vacuum, depicts high g acceleration and weightlessness right, and it depicts a moon that is a dead lump of grey rock. No alien Princesses to rescue, no warrior insects to battle.

The technical nits are few and relatively minor. Heinlein couldn't have guessed that the rocket would be chemical rather than nuclear, couldn't have guessed at multi-stage rockets, etc. And most notoriously, the movie depicts the lunar surface as a dried river bed! But these are not that serious as issues go.

What's also fascinating is the politics on display. Heinlein started out life as something of a leftie, but moved over to a libertarian view. He had disdain for government which is thoroughly present in the movie - the government couldn't possibly fund something like this, he tells us, not in peacetime. Only American industry can do that! And of course American industrialists certainly would fund such a venture, he tells us, purely out of patriotism and with no expectation of any return. One wonders what Heinlein made of the decade-long government-funded effort (proposed by a Democrat, no less!) that actually took America to the moon less than 20 years later.

Another fascinating aspect is the attitude towards nuclear technology. Heinlein was a strong proponent of nuclear power (and nuclear weapons), and pushed it whenever he could in his books. Whilst support for them was certainly a defensible position back then, and still is today, the blasé attitude to nuclear safety shown here seems rather naive to modern eyes. Test your rocket in the middle of mainland US? Sure, why not? Nothing could possibly go wrong. Concerns about such a thing in the news are treated as certain evidence of enemy agents trying to sabotage the project, and suggestions of testing the rocket in a remote Pacific island dismissed as absurd.

But these are not things that ruin the film, not in the least. They merely mark it as being a product of the times, as all films inevitably are.