MovieChat Forums > Riders to the Stars (1954) Discussion > If they don't know how to protect a rock...

If they don't know how to protect a rocket, then how...?

posted 11 years ago by hobnob53
6 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

The whole purpose of this frankly dopey mission is to capture a meteor intact and bring it back to Earth so they can discover what it is about its make-up that enables it to stand up against cosmic rays...which, it's said, cause objects in outer space to disintegrate. (It's claimed this is happening to the Moon, though it's never stated why the Earth would be exempt from this effect.) Anyway, finding this out, we're told, will enable us to launch rockets so that they can safely travel through space and return to Earth.

Okay, forget for the moment that cosmic rays do not cause objects to disintegrate -- in or out of space. As has been noted, cosmic rays are passing through you as you're reading this, and you aren't disintegrating. (Presumably.) The entire "scientific" premise of this film is completely false.

But by the movie's own internal "logic", how can they send men up in rockets to discover a way to safely bring the rockets back, when the point of their going in the first place is to find out how to return in one piece? The rocket they brought down at the start of the picture explodes into pieces and the steel it was made of shatters when given a slight hit. Why wouldn't this happen to the manned rockets? That little tidbit is never explained. (The men are also shown film -- actual film -- of two mice who survived a trip into space. Forget the manned rockets. How come the moused rocket didn't disintegrate?)

A slight catch-22, or maybe a practical joke the men find out about once they're aloft?

[–] liscarkat-2 11 years ago

They need to learn how to protect rockets from cosmic ray decay on extended missions. During the meteor-capture mission, they are only in space for about twenty minutes.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Yes, but the rocket they brought down at the beginning wasn't in space long, and the project head later shatters a piece of it with one tap. That's one of my points: not only is the premise ridiculous, but the movie isn't consistent about it.

[–] GrinninBarrett 11 years ago

Exactly what I thought.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Glad I'm not the only one! But you realize it's holding notions like that that would get us kicked off the list of candidates for one of the astronaut positions.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] hobnob53 8 years ago

I don't hold the suspect science seen in many (maybe most) sci-fi movies against them -- usually any such lapses are part of the fun. You love to get carried along for the ride. In fact, I give a great deal more latitude for mistakes to sci-fi films made 50 or 60 years ago, when there was less scientific knowledge, than I do to more recent films, with all their obvious scientific errors.

This is why I think the 1950s were such a great age for science fiction movies. We had acquired a certain level of scientific knowledge and development -- we had the atom bomb, rockets and computers, flying saucers and aliens came into everyday consciousness -- so ideas that previously would have seemed impossible or just plain silly suddenly appeared more plausible, or at least plausible-sounding. Yet at the same time we had only so much information: we didn't know all the effects of nuclear bombs or radiation, we didn't know what Mars or Venus were really like, and so on. The result was that we could postulate great science-fiction premises based on mixing our new-found advancements with all the unknowns we still faced. It was an equilibrium between knowledge and ignorance (or mistaken beliefs) that allowed filmmakers' imaginations greater horizons and full play.

The thing here is that, even in 1954, it was known that cosmic rays don't cause bodies in outer space to disintegrate, as the scientists specifically state at the start of the film is happening to the Moon. It wasn't Curt Siodmak so much as it was producer Ivan Tors who always took pride in the scientific accuracy of his movies -- in fact, Tors invented the term "science faction" to describe what he claimed was the factual basis of his 1950s sci-fi trilogy (The Magnetic Monster, Riders to the Stars, Gog). And indeed the two bookending films of that trio have plausible scientific premises even while lurching over into the realm of science fiction. But for some reason RTTS betrays Tors's normal fealty to a reasonably plausible scientific foundation and instead presents a demonstrably false premise known to be inaccurate even then.