Not Science Fiction

It's based on fact. Countdown is based on the novel "The Pilgrim Project" by Hank Searls. The book itself is based on a real contingency plan NASA cooked up in the early sixties if it looked like the Russians were going to beat us to the moon.

The idea of Project Pilgrim was to send an astronaut on a one way trip to the moon using a Mercury space capsule and a supply shelter. He would be stranded on the moon but resupplied with a monthly rocket for approximately one year until the new Saturn Five booster could be built to launch and land the LEM and two astronauts to rescue him. That's how desperate NASA and the politicians were for the USA to be the first on the moon. Seriously. I guess only the incompetence in the Russian space program kept NASA from launching this loony plan. (pun intended)

Writer Hank Searls got wind of the project through some friends deep inside NASA, and managed to get his hands on a scientific paper that suggested it "might" be possible to beat the Russians to the moon with a one-man one-way mission. The Pilgrim Project is based on that scientific paper and the movie Countdown is based loosely on that book.


Most of my friends who have inferiority complexes are absolutely right.