DESTINATION MOON: 1950 The full impact of this film is difficult to measure. Its scientific accuracy did more than predicting man's voyages to the moon, and sparking a wave of fun wannabees in the 1950's cinema.
This film changed the public perception of space travel from Flash Gordon to a nuts and bolts possibility. It granted credibility to sci-fi in general. It is not unfair to say that Destination Moon actually contributed to the realization of the ancient dream it depicted.
George Pal had produced a series of stop-motion shorts, called Puppetoons, winning an Oscar for such in 1944. In 1949, Pal simutaneously began The Great Rupert, a family film about a dancing squirrel, and a sci-fi project based on a novel by Robert Heinlein.
Destination Moon was the first movie to seriously address the technical aspects of surviving a lunar excursion. Fritz Lang's Die Frau Im Mond (1929) had a rocket design so accurate, the film was later confiscated by the Nazis to suppress the technology it presented.
This was due to technical advice from Willy Ley and Herman Oberth. Ley emigrated to the U.S. while Oberth, with others, like Wernher von Braun, went on to develop the V2. However, Lang's film had its astronaut survey the moon in her golf knickers, making it a fantasy. Pal was not going for fantasy.
	In fact, he was annoyed when people inquiring about the popular and widely advertised production would refer to it as a fantasy. This was to be a documentation of eventual fact. It was. Heinlein was directly involved on the screenplay and the sets during filming.
	The movie opens as Dr. Hargraves and General Thayer (Ret.) decide their failed rocket project was sabotaged. Two years later, Thayer tells Jim Barnes, the aircraft industrialist, that he believes a manned mission to the moon is possible and needed.
	At a black tie dinner, they convince investors that there is an international race to control the moon for strategic purposes. "The first country that can use the moon for the launching of missiles will control the earth." Thayer tells the tycoons.
	Funded, Barnes Aircraft builds an atomic powered rocket along Cargraves' design. Opposition to the project comes from various directions, and when permission to launch is denied for trumped up safety concerns, they take off anyway!
	The plan had been to train a crew for the flight, but Cargraves, Thayer, and Barnes launch their untested ship themselves, along with Sweeney, the regular Joe radio operator. The four are mashed into their seats by G-shock, then illed by zero-gravity.
En route, an exterior antennae gets stuck, and can only be freed manually. During the spacewalk, Cargraves drifts away from the hull and is narrowly rescued. Soon the moon is looming in the viewscreen. Barnes turns the rocket to slow their descent with the engines.
	All along, things are explained to Sweeney, and the audience, as to why they were doing something. This is Sweeney's main reason for inclusion. The landing sequence is tense. Barnes has had no practice at all at this theoretical landing proceedure.
He needs to find a smooth spot to land upon, but every second of drift spent searching burns valuable fuel. He picks a site, then over-shoots it, and must waste fuel to avoid crashing. Finally, he slams the ship down, shaken but intact. They are on the moon. Cautiously, they open the airlock beneath the cabin, and scan the horizon. Cargraves and Barnes climb down a retractable ladder that runs the length of the hull. Though not as eloquent as Armstrong's, Cargraves' line nonetheless completes the scene's prophetic feel as they step off the ladder. "By the grace of God, and in the name of the United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of and for the benefit of all mankind."
	They stand beneath the rocket on a Hollywood interpretation of the moon. Here science does take a back seat to drama, but this was essentially the first color Sci-fi movie, and Pal's moon needed to look appealing. Cracks riddle the surface.
	No one thought there were such things, but Pal needed them to force perspective on the vast moonscape that was really small. Art designer Chesley Bonestell later said, "I tried to make it just as dramatic as I could, and, as a result, it looks ridiculous now."
	This is an overly harsh criticism, only present because the rest of the film is so realistic. Bonestell likely never wasted his time seeing Fire Maidens of Outer Space, or its kind. It is comparison to such tripe that makes this film the semi-documentary it was intended as.
	Sweeney contacts Washington, and the astronauts try to describe the scene to radio listeners. They collect samples and readings, discovering uranium traces. Then, calculations reveal a problem. The rough landing used fuel needed for the liftoff from lunar gravity.
The experiments must be abandoned, and the ship is stripped of weight. The only chance of a return flight is to leave thousands of pounds of equipment behind. After dumping all non-essential gear, including 3 of their space suits, they radio Earth to check the numbers.
	They are still too heavy by almost 200 pounds! While the others debate who will stay that the others may go, Sweeney takes the last suit and exits the ship. Barnes convinces Sweeney that he has a plan that will save them all, and tells him to retrieve an oxygen tank .
Barnes tells the others to unbolt the entire radio console, and throw it away. Then he puts Sweeney to work with a small file. Sweeney files a groove in the hatchway to dangle an air tank outside from a cord. He closes the airlock and removes his suit, tying it to the cord.
	With Sweeney back upstairs, the hatch is opened and the suit is dragged out by the air tank. This plus the radio should reduce their weight just enough to take off. The ground beneath the rocket begins to collapse, and Barnes' angle of trajectory starts shifting!
	Finally, they are away in thier skeletal but functional rocketship. It glides through space, and the film closes as the four adventurers see Earth rising up before them. It must be presumed that a safe landing by nose mounted para- chtes is completed. This is not shown.

Destination Moon was a huge success, taking the Oscar for special effects in 1950. Public demand for more like it led to a decade of movies unafraid to explore anything the imagination, if not always the budget, could cook up. To use the cliche, it made space a household word. This is true to the degree that NASA lists the release of Destination Moon in its chronology of events leading to the Apollo landings. Robert Wise, director of The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951, said Destination Moon strongly influenced his decision to take on the famed "Flying Saucer" epic. Cecil B. DeMille reportedly came to the set to investigate for himself the giant structure that housed the set for the rocket's interior. It is said to have been 3 stories tall to accommodate the gyroscopically rotating drum that enclosed the cabin. The set was constructed to allow sections of the round walls to be removed. Thus, the set could be rotated, and then photographed from any angle. This is why the zero-G effects are so convincing in the cabin scenes, especially for string and harness work. The Orion Shuttle in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey employed the same technique with a stewardess walking up a wall. The space suits from Destination Moon became a long-term physical contribution to sci-fi film making. With one modification or another, these suits can be spotted in dozens of later productions. The film solidified Pal's reputaton as a magic maker, and money maker: The box office take in 1950 was 5.5 million dollars from an investment well under $600,000! The rocketship LUNA, as she was named, stands today as a shining symbol of the power of the motion picture, as well as mankind's need to achieve. The only improvement that could have been made would have been to include Morris Ankrum in the cast. Though no remake could hope to capture Destination Moon's glory in a modern arena, one intriguing possibility would be a movie that more closely followed Robert Heinlein's novel Rocketship Galileo. Destination Moon's screenplay was so very loosely based on this novel, that the greatest thing the two stories have in common is the name Heinlein. The novel concerns three young amatuer rocketmakers who help a Doctor Cargraves tinker together a homemade moon-rocket. When it works, and they land on the moon, they discover a secret rocket base run by Nazis! Now that's entertainment! Let the record show that Destinaton Moon was in the right place, at the right time, and remains one of Hollywood's proudest achievements.

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