Travel destination moon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Destination moon ( French original title: Objectif Lune ) is the sixteenth Tintin album by the Belgian illustrator Hergé . The story, which together with the continuation of steps on the Moon by the lunar trip of Tim , Snowy , Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus tells first appeared in 1953, four years before the launch of Sputnik 1 and 16 years before Neil Armstrong actually the first man stepped on the moon. The volume was translated into German by Ilse Strasmann .

action

After returning from the Middle East (see In the Realm of Black Gold ), Tim and Captain Haddock discover that Professor Bienlein has left. A telegram from him asks her to follow him to Syldavien without giving reasons. You are leaving immediately. At the destination, they are immediately received and driven across the country in a car to an apparently secret research base.

There they expect Professor Calculus, who tells them that they are in the atomic research facility of Sbrodj are, the space department he heads. The initial laughter of Haddock when Bienlein revealed to them that he was planning to build a moon rocket immediately turned into horror after he also mentioned that Haddock and Tim were planned as participants on this moon trip. By "coincidence," the professor is always deaf when he did not hear anything wants , for example, the very wordy rejection of the captain. In this volume he usually uses an ear tube almost all the time, which rarely leads to the usual misunderstandings.

The next day, Frank Wolff, the engineer at Bienlein’s side, shows them the various facilities at the atomic research center. You visit the nuclear reactor and finally the X-FLR 6, the experimental rocket with which Bienlein’s newly developed nuclear drive is to be tested.

It soon becomes apparent that attacks on the research facility are apparently planned and are being carried out, albeit with little effect. Parachutists break into the complex, apparently trying to steal the plans for the experimental rocket. While trying to expose the spies, Tim is shot down.

The two Schultzes , who also show up in the research station, are very clumsy as usual. They almost scare themselves to death when a skeleton supposedly comes to life - the reader quickly realizes that only an X-ray screen is involved. However, the Schultzes briefly arrest the skeleton from a doctor's office.

Finally the experimental rocket is ready to go. The start succeeds without any problems. The newly developed engine fires perfectly and the rocket orbits the moon once to take pictures of the back of the moon that no one had ever seen before. When the rocket emerges from the radio shadow of the moon, however, the takeover of control is no longer successful, as it is now remotely controlled by the enemy power (whose backers are not yet known) due to the stolen plans. However, Tim had expected something like this and gave the professor the tip to install an explosive device for self-destruction at short notice . So the rocket is now blown up so that it does not fall into the hands of the enemy. However, the images of the back of the moon are also lost.

Despite the setback, work on the manned moon rocket is now beginning. The new spacesuits are also being tested. When, after a somewhat unsuccessful attempt, the captain freaks out again and describes the professor as a jumping jack , the latter in turn loses his composure and breaks all security checks to show Haddock his work. At the sight of the almost finished rocket the captain is speechless. Another incident occurs when the professor shows Tim and the captain inside the rocket. Although he keeps telling them to watch out for the floor hatches, in the end he falls in himself and loses his memory in the process.

Every effort to bring the professor back from his hypnotic absence fails at first, despite several hilarious attempts by the captain. Only when he accidentally utters the same insult as before does he wake up. The rest of the preparations are going according to plan, except for renewed disapproval from the captain when he learns that drinking and smoking should be prohibited on board.

The big day has come. Everything is ready to go. Tim, Struppi, the captain, Professor Bienlein and Wolff step on the rocket and lie down on their cots. The countdown will start and the missile actually takes off as planned. The acceleration is so enormous that everyone on board is unconscious . Or are they dead? The tape ends with the ground station repeatedly making calls to the missile without receiving any response.

The story continues in Steps on the Moon .

Historical background

The album was released in 1953, four years before the launch of Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite, and even sixteen years before Apollo 11 , the first successful flight to the moon . Hergé has, so to speak, anticipated the story and has already reproduced many details correctly. The album was also strong from the film Destination Moon by Robert A. Heinlein influenced from the year 1950th However, it is not Hergé's first work that deals with astronomy. He had previously devoted an episode of Jo, Jette et Jocko to this topic. At the end of the volume, Hergé leaves his readers in the dark about the fate of his lunar travelers just as he did almost 90 years before Jules Verne in From the Earth to the Moon . Even during the original edition in Tintin , Hergé had to leave his readers in the dark about the further story for a whole 18 months because he suffered from overload and had to distance himself from his work. These psychological problems prompted him to hire helpers, as he could no longer master the great importance that Tim had achieved by himself - before he had always insisted on being responsible for "his" hero alone. Hergé's most important collaborator was Bob de Moor .

With the founding of “Studio Hergé” and the increase in the number of employees, especially in the publishing house, merchandising was also increasingly carried out for Tim and his friends .

The engineer Wolff mentions that the optical instruments for the moon mission come from a factory in Jena . It can only be the Carl Zeiss company .

Bienlein's interest in a moon landing arose after the Trabant helped him to save himself from the Incas. In order to avoid the fantastic, two specialists were asked: Bernard Heuvelmans and Prof. Alexandre Ananoff (wrote "Die Astronautik"). Even Willy Ley's "Inside the lunar module" was used for. B. in the scene in which Haddock's whiskey forms into a ball.

Details

Adjustments

After the story was preprinted in the Journal de Tintin , small changes were made before it got the form it is today. This z. B. some gags with the captain improved.

The rocket

V2 rocket on launch

The experimental rocket "XFLR-6" constructed by Bienlein was directly inspired by the V2 rocket that became famous during the Second World War . This rocket influenced many projects in the post-war period. The most noticeable deviation from the original is Hergé's drawing only three Finns instead of four.

Hergé received the technical background for his story from Wernher von Braun and Hermann Oberth , who wanted to shoot a rocket to the moon even before the war. Oberth had previously made his knowledge available for similar projects, for example as a technical advisor to Frau im Mond in 1929. Among the ideas he introduced were the “reversing maneuver” (in steps on the moon ) and the creation of artificial gravity on board through continuous acceleration.

Some of Hergé's ideas also came true much later, such as the existence of ice on the moon.

The research institute

The area surrounding the Sbrodj Research Station is reminiscent of the American Oak Ridge National Laboratory , where uranium was enriched during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

The flight control computer

The flight control computer show a very close resemblance to IBM - mainframe computers of that time, including the IBM 604 of the 1948th

Adaptations

The album has been used in both of the previously released cartoon series, along with the sequel.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b “Hergé ne s'est pas trompé” , Le Monde, supplément Tintin et la Lune, June 21, 2009
  2. ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 135; 136
  3. ↑ Objectif Lune, p.54, Casterman 1953
  4. ↑ This page ( memento of April 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) shows some machines that look very similar to those drawn by Hergé (for example the BS120 in the middle of the page)
  5. ↑ IBM 604 on the page of the Computer History museum

literature