"WOMAN IN THE MOON" "The first scientific science fiction film" "This Moonscape looks fantastic" "A desert the designers conjured up in the new UFA studios in Babelsberg" "It took 40 trucks of Baltic Sea sand to create the Moonscape" ""A section of the spaceship towers out of the desert" wrote the "Berliner Morgenpost"" "In 1928 Fritz Lang made one of man's oldest dreams come true on film" ""Woman In The Moon", an adventure story about love, gold and power" "And it was advertised as the first utopian film based on scientific fact" "In 1928, everyone was mad for rockets in Berlin" "Fritz von Opel's rocket car sped round the Berlin race track and the Space Travel Association had been established in 1927" "A slim volume, published in 1923, prompted the event "The Rocket Into Planetary Space"" "One of its most enthusiastic readers was the film director, Fritz Lang" "The text contained the first complete concept for manned space travel" "Its author was a young grammar school teacher, Hermann Oberth" "He advised the director Fritz Lang on rocket travel" "His forward-looking work contained the fundamental elements to build a multi-staged liquid fuel rocket which would one day go into space with men on board" "Oberth wanted to test out his ideas but he hadn't the financial resources" "In my work for "Woman In The Moon" I persuaded Fritz Lang that it would be good publicity for his film if serious work was simultaneously undertaken" "He was able to raise funding for me and I was finally able to start doing practical experiments" "So UFA's advertising budget financed the first liquid fuel rocket" "The plan was to launch it on the day the film premiered" "Among Oberth's colleagues were the engineer, Rudolf Nebel and the 18-year-old grammar school pupil, Wernher von Braun" "Oberth first wanted to resolve the problem of the rocket's thrust" "In one of these experiments there was an explosion" "I was hit in the eye by glass but it showed me that it was possible to burn fuel in such a small space" "And I..." "And after this explosion I first made a chamber with an opening to allow the fuels to be injected and burnt and then I built the rocket engine" "Hermann Oberth had designed the blueprint for high-performance propulsion for rocket engines" "But the rocket wasn't launched for the film's premiere" "UFA's advertising budget had been exhausted" "Only the film rocket would be launched" "Here, Fritz Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou, celebrate" ""A rocket flight from one country to another is just an interim step" ""We don't know if one day we might not fly to the Moon" as Hermann Oberth said during filming" "Years later, it turned out that the rocket in the film was very close to reality" "The countdown starts" "Fritz Lang invented this way of counting which was later to mark the take-off of all real-life rockets" "Five people embarked on the journey to the Moon" "The rocket builder, Helius, played by Willy Fritsch with his assistant, Windegger, played by Gustav von Wangenheim" "Gerde Maurus is the woman in the Moon, known as Friede" "Fritz Rasp, an agent from a finance syndicate" "Professor Manfeldt with the laboratory mouse played by Klaus Pohl" "3 seconds to go" "July 16th 1969, and the world's eyes are on Cape Canaveral" "What started as fiction became reality" "The rocket, Saturn V, is on its way to the Moon" ""The Rocket Into Planetary Space"" "Oberth had calculated the pressure a person could withstand" "1969, and the astronauts' heart rates are lower than expected" "Two and a half minutes after blast-off, the first stage is jettisoned" "Six and a half minutes after blast-off the second stage is jettisoned" "The international finance syndicate stays back on Earth" "It has acquired the rocket builder Helius' secret documents to make the space programme its own" "They believe the documents will reveal Helius' technical knowledge" "Agravic zone" "His knowledge is based on detailed studies for future Moon travel" "H32's flight path" "A stowaway is found on board the rocket in space" "An 11-year-old child, who loves utopian page-turners" "The rocket is now on its way to the Moon" "The astronauts move weightlessly in space" "According to the actor, Willy Fritsch Fritz Lang came up with a remarkable solution" ""Straps were attached everywhere, including on the floor" ""We had to crawl with hands and feet from strap to strap"" "Research, lasting years, tested how far man's resilience could be pushed" "Only then, were men sent to the Moon" "The Apollo capsule with the lunar module approaches the Moon's orbit" "Armstrong and Aldrin transfer to the lunar module, Eagle" "111 km above the Moon's surface the spacecraft, Columbia, has separated from the lunar module" "Collins stays on board and slowly circles the Moon" "The astronauts manoeuvre the lunar module so the engine is pointing in the flight direction" "The Moon's surface rushes past faster and faster" "Pieces of rock are strewn around, black chasms and a glistening white landscape" "Over the Moon's pitted horizon, the Earth suddenly appears" "The spacecraft prepares to land" "The landing is the only stage which had not been possible to test on any previous space travel" "A milestone in history is reached" "The first Earthling steps onto the Moon" ""One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"" "Neil Armstrong's first words as he stepped onto the satellite 1929, and the spaceship H32 reaches the Moon but that is where any scientific and technical authenticity ends" "Professor Manfeldt tests the oxygen content in the deadly wilderness and contrary to contemporary belief, finds that the Moon has an atmosphere" "The scientist disposes of his protective covering and so Fritz Lang's film fiction departs from scientific credibility" "Forty years on, TV images of the two astronauts on the Moon show how reality overtook fiction" "Willy Fritsch recalls, "Of course, it was known in 1928 "that there was less gravity on the Moon" ""We had shoes with extra-thick cork soles "which were supposed to look like lead"" "Oberth was not responsible for the plot or the end of Professor Manfeldt" "Thea von Harbou wrote the screenplay" "The space mission is over and H32 prepares for its return journey" "The engineer Helius stays on the Moon and Friede stays with him, the woman in the Moon" "The first scientific science fiction film was a massive hit for the researchers" "People were convinced by Oberth's rocket idea depicted in this film" "Now the Reich's Chemical Institute at Plötzensee financed the experimenters' costly work with liquid fuel rockets" "The film's premiere was to have been advertised by a rocket now that the film was a good advert for the rocket's development" "In September 1930, the Space Travel Association in Berlin Reinickendorf under Rudolf Nebel, took possession of an old shooting ground" "Among the rocket enthusiasts was Wernher von Braun" "His work was to be decisive for future rocket technology" ""Woman In The Moon" was the emblem ...for the Nazi's dreaded weapon, the V-2" "In 1933, Hitler seized power and the rocket experiments under Wernher von Braun were declared a military secret" "In 1937, Fritz Lang's film "Woman In The Moon" was banned" "The National Socialists seized and locked away all the material"