Explorers on the Moon
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| Explorers on the Moon (On a marché sur la Lune) |
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 Cover of the English edition |
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| Publisher | Casterman |
|---|---|
| Date | 1954 |
| Series | The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin) |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Hergé |
| Artist(s) | Hergé |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Tintin |
| Date(s) of publication | October 29, 1952 - December 29, 1953 |
| Language | French |
| ISBN | ISBN 2-203-00116-X |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Date | September 1, 1959 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-416-92560-X |
| Translator(s) | Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Destination Moon, 1953 |
| Followed by | The Calculus Affair, 1956 |
Explorers on the Moon, published in 1954 is the seventeenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. Its original French title is On a marché sur la Lune ("We walked on the Moon"). It is the second of a two-part adventure begun in Destination Moon.
Contents |
[edit] The storyline
The story continues from Destination Moon. Calculus is taking Tintin, Tintin's dog Snowy, Haddock and his assistant Frank Wolff to the moon in his rocket. However, Thomson and Thompson come up from the hold, having mistaken the time of the launch (1:34 a.m. on Tuesday, June 3, 1952). Calculus is concerned at the effect this will have on their air supplies; Haddock is furious, and lambasts the Thompson twins for being too imbecilic to understand the difference between 1:34 a.m. and 1:34 p.m.
The journey to the Moon is not uneventful--Haddock has smuggled some whisky in hollowed-out books, becomes drunk, and engages in some unscheduled extravehicular activity that results in him briefly becoming a moon of the asteroid Adonis. Tintin must also don a space suit to fetch him, and, in a very rare display of temper, lashes out at the Captain, declaring that the latter's recklessness has "nearly cost us our lives." When the rocket must temporarily halt in order to execute the turnaround maneuver that will enable it to land on the moon right side up, the momentary lack of natural gravity also poses problems for Haddock, who neglects to put on his magnetic-soled boots in time.
Additionally, the Thompson twins suffer one of their periodic relapses of the condition caused by their ingestion of the energy-multiplying substance Formula Fourteen (see Land of Black Gold). As a result, they sprout thick hair that grows at lightning speed and frequently changes color. The Captain, having no other immediate duty, volunteers to cut their hair, but can scarcely keep up with it, and begins to suffer blisters from the scissors. He remarks sarcastically that in future, when people ask him what he did on the rocket, he will reply, "Me? I was the hairdresser!" Gradually, however, the twins' condition abates, and their appearances begin to return to normal.
The spacecraft lands safely in the Hipparchus Crater, and by agreement of the crew, Tintin is the first to set foot on the Moon - the first human to do so. Everyone then gets a chance to walk about; even the Captain enjoys it, but upon seeing the Earth, expresses fear about whether they will survive to see it again.
The crew soon starts unpacking the scientific payload (telescopes, cameras, and a battery-powered tank), finishing the work at 23:45 Earth time on June 3. Calculus decides to reduce the total stay on the lunar surface from 14 Earth days to 10 in order to conserve oxygen. Three days later, the Captain, Wolff and Tintin take the battery-powered tank to explore some stalactite caves in the direction of the the Ptolemaeus Crater; Snowy falls on an ice sheet, damaging his two-way radio and there is a minor drama in rescuing him, but they return to the rocket safely.
Tintin decides to rest up and have lunch with Wolff while the Captain, the twins and Calculus immediately go out in the tank again on a 48-hour trip to explore the lunar caves in detail as Calculus suspects they might find uranium or radium deposits there.
A sudden turn of events occurs when the spy plot briefly overlooked in Destination Moon is revealed. A secret agent from a foreign power, the brutish Colonel Jorgen, whom Tintin had previously encountered and bested in King Ottokar's Sceptre, has been hiding in the rocket since it was launched eight days previously (having been smuggled aboard along with technical equipment). Wolff reveals his history of gambling debts, which Jorgen's employers have used to blackmail him into aiding them involuntarily.
When Tintin goes below to fetch some supplies for lunch, Jorgen knocks him out and tries to seize control of the rocket, which he plans to fly back to his own country, leaving the others marooned on the Moon. Outside, from the moon tank, the Captain, the Thompsons and Calculus watch, horrified, as the rocket blasts off, shuts down, and, for one horrible moment, appears to be on the verge of collapsing before coming to rest right-side up. Tintin has freed himself and succeeded in foiling the plot, but in order to do so has been forced to sabotage the rocket to prevent Jorgen's attempted liftoff. After the group interrogates Jorgen and Wolff, Tintin eventually locks the spy in the hold, against protests by the Captain that they won't have enough oxygen to last the journey home unless they abandon him on the Moon or kill him. Calculus determines that the crew needs at least four days to repair the damaged rocket while the remaining oxygen supply will last at most four days.
Due to the strain on the oxygen supplies, the crew decides to abandon some of the equipment, rather than disassembling it and packing it up, and to cut short the lunar stay. The repair work is completed slightly ahead of schedule after three days, and the rocket cleared for lift-off 4:52 PM Earth time as the sun sets over the Hipparchus Crater. Even so, shortly before take-off, the Captain becomes the first among them to experience a bout of dizziness due to build-up of carbon dioxide. The lift-off is successful, but the rocket is off-course, and by the time the crew awake from the liftoff-induced blackout and correct it, they have lost additional time and consumed yet more oxygen.
Halfway back to Earth, Jorgen escapes after overpowering the Thompsons, who had gotten the idea into their heads that handcuffs would be more secure than the Captain's knots. When Wolff sees that Jorgen intends to shoot Tintin and the others, he tries to dissuade him; the gun goes off accidentally, and Jorgen is killed instantly. The crew have no choice but to consign the body to space. However, even without Jorgen, now there isn't enough oxygen to make it home. Overcome with guilt, Wolff opens the airlock and lets himself out into space to save the others' lives whilst they are sleeping, leaving a moving farewell note.
The rest of the group continues towards Earth, as their oxygen runs low. Everyone falls unconscious. Tintin faints but mission control sounds a piercing tuning signal which awakens him, allowing him to set the rocket up to land. After the ship lands, firemen break the door open, finding everyone unconscious. On the tarmac, everyone is revived, except for the Captain. A doctor is giving a prostrate Haddock oxygen, but fears that his heart is worn out because "It seems he was a great whisky drinker." Suddenly roused by the sound of the word "whisky", Captain Haddock wakes up with a start. Everyone rejoices and a ground crew member returns with a bottle of whisky. Calculus gives a toast which includes his hopes for a return to the moon. The Captain gets furious and promptly walks away, resulting with a trip and a fall over a stretcher in the midst of declaring that "Man's proper place ... is on dear old Earth!"
[edit] Scientific accuracy/inaccuracy
Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon were written well over a decade before the 1969 moon landings and several years before manned space flight. Hergé was keen to ensure that the books were scientifically accurate, based on ideas about space flight then available.
The rockets bear a striking physical resemblance to V-2 rockets, down to the checkerboard pattern on the hull which the V-2 designers used to measure the rolling of a rocket during test flights. No separate lunar lander is shown: the whole ship turns about on its axis, lands 'feet down', and returns intact, in stark contrast to the real-life Saturn V moon craft, which are disposable multi-stage and leave most of the rocket behind to save weight. This is made possible by the rocket's extremely efficient propulsion which, more than half a century later, remains much more capable than any real-life rocket propulsion system.
Hergé's rocket has two propulsion systems: a conventional liquid-fueled chemical rocket engine for launching (and also for deceleration upon landing), and an engine for the spacebound part (i.e. >800km altitude) of the journey, described as being nuclear-powered. The depicted rationale for this solution is to avoid contaminating takeoff and landing sites with radioactive exhaust products. Today, nuclear power is not widespread in space propulsion because of another safety risk, namely that of the reactor core or other radioactive materials falling back to Earth upon accidental or programmed destruction of the spacecraft. Also, nuclear power is being used only for space probe propulsion as the thrust generated by such a motor is insufficient to lift a heavy spacecraft off a planet. Hergé's rocket most closely resembles that of the cancelled Project Orion, which would have used pulsed nuclear charges as rocket propulsion. However, this rocket provides continuous thrust since the enormous energy produced by the nuclear fission explosions somehow can be released gradually.
The books shows gravity being generated through the constant acceleration of the moon rocket. This is unrealistic because even the most powerful rockets conceived of by science cannot produce sufficient sustained thrust (it will run out of propellant fairly quickly unless the exhaust velocity is extremely high).
When the rocket is turned around halfway through the journey (to decelerate), the crew experiences weightlessness for a short time, and the effects of this weightlessness are correctly portrayed, including floating liquid held into a spherical shape by surface tension.
There is a glaring flaw in the configuration of the rocket's acceleration couches, in which the explorers lay face-down. All launches in reality have passengers lay on their backs, and the only worse position for a human being to endure acceleration than face-down would be heads-down. Herge took the cue from the diagram of the Werner von Braun moonship without realizing that the crew members who need to monitor the chart recorder are prone, but everybody in their acceleration stations are properly on their backs.[1] The lift off acceleration also seems to be significantly higher than that of existing real-life manned spacecraft (the crew passes out due to the tremendous G force).
The space-suits are rigid and have fishbowl-like helmets made of glass-like "multiplex," with bulky backpacks integrated that permit radio communications with the ship and other astronauts. The main differences from the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts are that they are apparently rigid, rather than soft, are orange rather than white, and the helmets lack sun-shielding tints.
Hergé accurately represented the methods of movement on the Moon: Tintin and friends hop in huge jumps. They also have a lunar rover vehicle although it is far larger and heavier than the Apollo equivalent, more akin to a tank than a moon buggy.
Notable failings include the representation of the Earth as seen from space (there are no clouds), and the lunar landscape, which is represented as craggy, unlike the smooth, undulating hills of reality. The asteroid Adonis is a real object, but despite being classed as a near-Earth asteroid, its orbit does not bring it between the Earth and the Moon. However, its exact position was not known in the early 1950s and it is of course possible that Calculus in fact has mis-identified another near-Earth asteroid.
Hergé was delighted to have predicted the lunar mission fairly accurately, given the limited knowledge at the time, and later he produced a cartoon of Tintin greeting Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
[edit] Merchandise
Various merchandise has been released about this book. In the USA, a pop-up-version was made. A Viewmaster set was also released. The Moon Rocket has been used on various merchandise.
[edit] External links
- Explorers on the Moon at Tintinologist.org
