"Frau im Mond" ("Woman in the Moon"), a 1929 German sci-fi movie by Fritz Lang and Hermann Oberth.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

I first saw a snippet of Frau im Mond in the Seattle Museum of Flight, in a brief exhibit talking about early visions of what space travel was like. The score got stuck in my head, so I sought out more of it.

The story goes that Wolf Helius is trying to get people to the Moon. After an early unmanned test flight reveals the presence of gold on the Moon, a bunch of businessmen who control the gold market approach him. They'll finance his mission, but only if one of their agents rides along -- otherwise, they'll put a stop to it for good. Helius reluctantly agrees.

This is where Hermann Oberth's involvement as technical advisor shows itself. If Metropolis (also by Fritz Lang) was one of the first serious sci-fi movies to have a robot, Frau im Mond is the same way with space travel (no cannons or moon-men to be found here). The rocket, Friede ("Peace"), has two stages powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and reference is made to the Earth escape velocity of 11.2 km/sec. It is built in a vehicle assembly building and rolled out to a launchpad (on rails and lowered into water), and when the time to launch approaches, we witness the first-ever recorded countdown. Fritz Lang invented the countdown to increase the tension prior to launch (compare to the "count-up" to 40 in From the Earth to the Moon) -- check out his own words on the matter here: http://www.spektrum.de/quiz/was-verdankt-die-raumfahrt-dem-stummfilm-die-frau-im-mond-1929-von-fritz-lang/636420. Translated to English, he's saying "If I count one, two, three, four, ten, fifty, a hundred, the public won't know when the rocket gets going. But, if I count backwards: [...] three, two, one, ZERO! -- then they'll understand."

During the flight itself, Lang shows what life in microgravity may be like, with the difficulty of moving and of pouring liquids (see the "Landing" segment).

To give you an idea of how visionary this film was, the German government confiscated every copy and prop they could get their hands on during WWII because of its similarity to their V-2 program (headed by Wernher von Braun, Oberth's student).

There's some more action and romance, but who cares about that? We wanna see the rocket! Fortunately, "Manferot" on YouTube has most of the parts featuring the rocket (the most important parts, of course) on his channel. The score is a modern addition (from some modern remastering/release), but I still think it's really cool:

The actual takeoff happens in here the "Launch" video, at 3:16: http://youtu.be/I8gu1p939a4?t=3m16s

For the other videos (I've omitted two, since a post can only have five videos in it), check out Manferot's channel. (Look for "The Rocket" and "Stowaway".)

What do you all think?

Edited January 31, 2015 by Kerbas_ad_astra
Helius isn't a professor. Oops!

[Newt]

I watched this a while ago. Certainly an interesting film. It reminded me a bit of The Twilight Zone, (I shan't give away the ending, but those who have seen it may see what I mean).

And I thought that Mannfeldt (or some other scientist) had concluded the presence of the gold rather a bit earlier, to be laughed at by other astronomers. Some years later Helius was convinced to pursue launching a ship there.

I also liked some of the special effects, though some of them (even considering the date of production) looked a tad silly. Mannfeldt also had what looked like a textured relief globe of the Moon.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

You're right about Manfeldt (1 "n"), but I don't think the gold was Helius's motivation -- he seemed more interested in figuring out how to get there and the exploration itself (and possibly to vindicate the professor -- the other astronomers were total jerks to him, though saying things like "laughter is the first response of fools with calcified brains" probably didn't win him any friends). Helius also was not the first to attempt to reach the moon, since we see a memorial to other would-be spacefarers, but I guess it's never said why they tried.

Related to your comment on the ending, I guess I should mention (to everyone else -- you obviously know this already) that there was one major concession to reality: the far side of the moon is depicted as having an atmosphere (and more). I don't think too many people seriously suspected this to be the case by the time of the movie's production (though nobody really knew for sure, and some serious astronomers really did think that it might be so), but silent films depend heavily on the actors' body and facial language (there are several parts where quite a bit of conversation is happening, but only sparsely populated by text cards -- we're meant to fill in the rest from the action and music ourselves), so spacesuits are only briefly depicted before they turn out to be unnecessary.

I get where your comparison to the Twilight Zone comes from, but in retrospect, I think the movie is also very much like some Kerbal Space Program experiences we've all had.

The data made it back to Earth, and Helius left the note asking for a rescue.