From the Earth to the Moon 1958

Victor Barbicine, Joseph Cotten, a munitions producer, unveils a new explosive called Power X, which he insists is far more powerful than anything previously devised. Stuyvesant Nicholl, George Sanders, a skeptical metallurgist, dismisses the claim and backs a wager of $100,000 ($2.4 million today) that Power X cannot ruin his invention—the hardest metal known to science. Barbicane then stages a demonstration with a modest cannon and, to everyone’s surprise, obliterates Nicholl’s material and even tears a swath through the surrounding countryside.

President Ulysses S. Grant, Morris Ankrum, intervenes, urging Barbicane to cease work after several wary nations warn that advancing Power X could be construed as an act of war. Barbicane agrees, but a curious discovery soon reshapes his plans: fragments of Nicholl’s metal recovered from the demonstration have been transformed into a remarkably strong yet lightweight ceramic. This breakthrough sparks the idea of building a spaceship to travel to the Moon, and Barbicane enlists Nicholl’s help to construct the vessel. At the same time, Nicholl’s daughter, Virginia, Debra Paget, and Barbicane’s assistant, Ben Sharpe, Don Dubbins, find themselves drawn to one another, adding a human current to the looming scientific mission.

With the ship finally completed, Barbicane, Nicholl, and Sharpe launch into space amid grand fanfare. Once beyond Earth’s atmosphere, Nicholl—a man of deep religious conviction—confesses that he has sabotaged the voyage, convinced that Barbicane has violated divine law. The crisis deepens when Virginia is discovered to have stowed away aboard the craft. In a tense moment, Nicholl agrees to cooperate with Barbicane in a bid to save her. Sharpe is knocked unconscious, and he and Virginia are placed in the ship’s safest compartment, separated from the main crew. In a calculated move, Barbicane and Nicholl fire their rockets in a way that sends the young couple back toward Earth, while the two scientists remain aboard a separate section that lands on the Moon, with no way off. From their lunar post, they manage to signal to the returning pair that they have reached the Moon and survived the perilous journey, preserving a hopeful bridge between science, faith, and family.