Destination Moon 1950

Whereas Lang’s film helped the development of rocketry and astronautic technologies, Pal and Pichel’s film contributed to the field an audio-visual illustration of the potential issues concerning real Space travel, a sensorial rendering of speculation for the scientific community and an easy-to-understand demonstration for the general public (one).
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Destination Moon helped build up the mood in the general public for the coming of the Space Race. The Cold War atmosphere, or horizon, was set up when the spectators watched the film, more than seven years before the successful launch of Sputnik-1, the first artificial celestial object to be sent up in orbit. The film is quite ahead of its time not only in its conceptualization of the Space Race but also in its proposition to open Space industries to private companies and capitals. Given the rather successful achievement today in both research and commercial applications of Space technologies by private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Bigelow, businessmen like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Robert Bigelow have indeed come to embody the main spirit of this film. 

The film's producers understood that its success would depend first and foremost on the verisimilitude of the space journey, something that screenwriter Robert Heinlein had already established as a firm criterion in the development of his novel. As Oberth also did in Lang's film, Heinlein devoted special attention to the rocket's take-off (two), flight (three) and landing on the Moon (four). Heinlein was confident that a technologically accurate film would have the necessary support from scientific circles. At the same time, he was concerned that a lack of rigour or recourse to a narrative of fantastic solutions would ruin both the credibility of the experts involved and the admiration of teenage audiences. In a memo to George Pal and an investor, Heinlein asserted: If, while watching it, the public believes in our film emotionally and accepts it as real, then it will be a success. A blockbuster... Those who have seen it will tell others of their experience, so wonderful, so sensational, so out of this world. You can't believe it! They've really made you feel you're on the moon!