Una donna nella luna

Frau im Mond may appear scientifically outlandish to the modern viewer, and the high-style expressionistic acting of its actors overdone, but nevertheless the film should be recognized as a landmark which impacted world history. The UFA studio commissioned a then small and marginal band of German amateur rocket aficionados centered around Hermann Oberth to work as technical consultants to the film's designers, and UFA even commissioned them to build a rocket to be fired at the film's premier in Berlin. The rocket wasn't completed in time, but the laboratory furnished by UFA, not to mention the heady excitement of a brush with the highest level of cinema, and the salutory infusion of unexpected cash, together set some of these young rocketeers on their life paths. These included Willy Ley, and a young Prussian aristocrat engineer named Wehrner von Braun.

When the Nazis came to power, Fritz Lang parted with his wife and partner Thea von Harbou and came to Hollywood. The production models of the liquid-fired rockets from Frau im Mond were so advanced that in 1936 the Gestapo seized them as state secrets. Werhner von Braun went on to develop the brilliant Nazi terror weapon known as the V-2. Post-war, the V-2 and its German designers begat both the American and Soviet space programs. All subsequent space history was profoundly influenced by these developments. Frau im Mond maintains its impact to the present day. For just one example-- purely as a dramatic device to build tension before the rocket's lift-off to the Moon, Fritz Lang introduced title cards counting down from ten to one. The "countdown",as it became known, was so successful that NASA and everybody else has been doing it ever since.