Original subtitles

MOON

Written and Directed by P. KLUSHANTSEV

Scientific Advisors: Academician N.P. BARABASHOV Dr. Sc. (Phys.-Math.) A.V. MARKOV Dr. Sc. (Phys.-Math.) V.V. SHARONOV Cand. Sc. (Tech.) A.V. POVALYAEV

Director of Photography: A. KLIMOV Production Designer: Yu. SHVETS

Composed Shots by A. KLIMOV A. ROMANENKO Composed Arts by E. MIRONOVA Yu. SHVETS Animation Director: G. YERSHOV

Music by A. TCHERNOV Recording Director: R. LEVITINA Editor: I. ZYRINA

Associated Producer: S. RABINOV

LENNAUCHFILM 1965

The Moon...

For thousands of years its silver light has inspired poets.

Soothed the agitated.

Caressed the enamored.

But now the Moon is the first station of man's upcoming crusade

to the planets of the solar system.

We already look at it with the eyes of a climber, a geologist, an engineer.

EARTH

MOON

Here it is. Our companion, small and old.

There's no atmosphere on it. No water.

A dry, stony, naked sphere without lustre, without haze, without clouds.

Through a telescope, the image of the Moon is inverted.

Near the border of light and shade, lunar surface topography is clearly visible.

The lunar relief is very peculiar. Rings are everywhere.

Above all, there are circular recesses with torn edges.

They're called craters. In the middle of some a central peak stands.

Ring mountains with a plain in the middle are called cirques.

This cirque is called Ptolemaeus, one of the biggest.

The entire southern coast of Crimea could fit on the bottom,

SEVASTOPOL

YALTA

ALUSHTA

from Sevastopol to Sudak.

This is how the Moon looks through a telescope under 1000X magnification.

Due to atmospheric interference this is the limit for now.

The visibility of the relief on the Moon changes under different lighting.

Now the sun is high. The relief is hardly seen.

But now the sun is sinking to the horizon.

The roughness is more evident.

The height of lunar mountains are determined by the length of shadows.

With oblique illumination, even knolls with a half kilometer base are noticeable,

in the form of such a dot with a long shadow.

Why is the surface of the Moon so strange?

In some areas, everything is pitted for hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

Mysterious plains extend in other areas.

Can one really sort out this chaos? It's possible.

Observe carefully.

One can see, for example, that lunar mountains are of different ages.

The crater Tycho is in the middle of the frame.

It's a fresh formation. The edges of the crater are well-defined and sharp.

But here is the ancient cirque Maginus. It's edges are destroyed.

There are many younger craters on them.

Look further.

There was a period in the history of the Moon when fluid lava flooded the lowlands.

It later hardened. Plains formed.

Now they're conditionally called seas.

The lava sometimes filled separate depressions, like the cirque Plato.

Here the lunar crust settled.

The mountains leaned, and lava flooded them from one end.

The eras are traceable everywhere. The cirque Fracastorius is prior to seas.

It existed before the outpouring of lava.

But the crater Ross is post seas.

It emerged on the surface of an already hardened sea.

How did all of this happen?

A shared vision of this doesn't exist in science.

According to one of the hypotheses,

lumps gradually coalesce out of crushed grains of primordial cosmic dust.

They enlarge.

A planet is born.

Pressure grows in the depths of the huge sphere.

The temperature rises.

The hot rocks don't melt.

Their molecules are so compressed that they can't move.

On top, the seams jostle each other. They shift.

Fractures emerge. Pressure instantly drops.

The hot rocks become liquid. Magma forms.

It's lighter, and makes its way to the surface through cracks, melting, encountering solids.

Magma chambers form below the crust of the planet.

One step remains to the surface.

What happens next?

What forces break the lunar crust

and release millions of cubic kilometers of fiery liquid magma?

Internal forces or external forces?

We'll listen to supporters of the external forces,

the supporters of the meteorite hypothesis.

A study of the lunar surface shows that magma poured out

only as a result of the impacts of large meteorites.

It went something like this.

By destroying the crust, a meteorite opened the magma chamber.

Sometimes it melted the surrounding solid

by splitting on impact from its abrupt halt.

In both cases, lava could flood the crash site.

It later hardened.

A major depression with a flat bottom was created.

This is how cirques, bays and even whole seas arose on the Moon.

And each formation was created with one impact.

Let's bring in supporters of the volcanic hypothesis.

A study of the lunar surface shows that magma has always poured out by itself

through internal volcanic forces.

It went something like this.

Lava broke through a crack.

On this spot, a volcano grew.

The magma chamber underneath it depleted over time.

The dormant volcano gradually settled piece by piece and fell in.

For millions of years, an area of collapses formed

on the site of the former volcano - a volcanic caldera.

Lava continued to come out of the cracks.

It flooded the bottom of the caldera.

And a circular plain appeared among the mountains.

This is how cirques arose on the Moon.

Bays.

And even whole seas.

At least the location of craters

in a chain along abyssal fractures, like on Earth, favors this hypothesis.

Then again, light rays around many craters favor the meteorite hypothesis.

These are sprays of crushed solids blown apart on impact.

Sprays, but blown apart in the explosion of volcanoes.

Their mouths were plugged by hardened lava.

What about the experiment with powder?

Here's a powder lump falling on a friable layer.

Typical lunar craters appear. Even with a central peak.

The central peaks are extruded lava plugs.

An example is the terrestrial volcano Mount Pelee.

The crater Hyginus. A meteorite hit and split the lunar crust.

Vice versa. Magma gored an opening through an old crack.

Vallis Alpes is a clear furrow from a meteorite.

But the crater Wargentin is filled to the brim with lava.

This speaks of enormous pressure from the inside.

Meteorite craters exist on Earth.

METEORITE CRATER "CANYON DIABLO", ARIZONA, USA

At least the one in Arizona, with a diameter of 1,200 meters.

This is yesterday. Volcanism is manifested on the Moon today.

Lava filled the mouth of the crater Linné.

Igneous gases have been noticed in the crater Alphonsus.

Such disputes have been dragging on for decades.

And man will discover the truth only by personally reaching the Moon.

Only on the spot, by examining everything and touching with his own hands.

But, before that, man will have to set foot on the Moon.

After all, the Moon is another world.

It's good if the leg of the first cosmonaut will feel solid rock underfoot.

But what if it plunges into some kind of slough?

Or sinks in loose bottomless dust.

Or breaks a fragile shell and collapses.

The problem of lunar soil became the number one problem

for astronomers who are busy studying the Moon.

The scientists themselves will tell us about their work in this field.

And so, lunar soil.

We're at the Kharkov observatory of academician N.P. Barabashov.

The photometric method was the first applied for the study of lunar soil.

Its principle will be explained to you by our employee

who has worked a lot in this field, Valentina Fedorets.

She has even prepared visual aids.

Yes. Here are three samples of surface.

They're all painted with the same paint.

Here the surface is smooth. Here it's rough.

And here it's pitted and porous like a sponge.

Now try to examine them like this, under different lighting.

Please take it. Now the light falls on them from behind you.

The samples seem the same by brightness.

Now turn. Light switches to the side.

The brightness of the samples varies differently.

Then, by the nature of change in brightness one can judge the nature of the surface.

That's the whole principle.

We're practically filming the Moon at different phases.

Under different angles of lighting,

we then measure the density of the negatives.

We look at how the brightness changes.

Based on this we judge the degree of roughness of the lunar surface.

What does this mean?

It turns out that the lunar surface behaves like this sample.

It's pitted.

How can one measure the size of the roughness of lunar soil?

For this, different methods exist.

For example, radiolocating.

The meter radio waves sent by us return only from the middle of the Moon,

as if the slopes of lunar plains are mirror-smooth.

Well then, the roughness of lunar soil in comparison to this radio wave is negligible.

Light rays that have a wavelength of less than a micron behave quite differently.

They're perfectly reflected back to Earth even from the edge of the lunar disc.

So, the roughness of lunar soil, in comparison to the length of a light wave,

is large enough.

It turns out to be less than a meter but more than a micron.

Apparently, the lunar surface is covered by something like small gravel

from crushed volcanic rocks.

A cosmonaut won't stumble.

But he can fall in. What if this gravel turns out to be fragile?

I think this unlikely.

American pictures, taken with the help of Ranger 7, confirm my opinion.

But, nonetheless, you should talk to those who measure temperatures on the Moon.

For example, with professor Aleksandr Markov, at Pulkovo Observatory.

The measuring of temperatures on the lunar surface was carried out by us at Pulkovo

and at other observatories.

Lately, interesting results were obtained

at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory

by physicist Mikhail Markov and astronomer Vera Khokhlova.

An image of the Moon

with a diameter of 25cm is obtained in the focus of the telescope here.

The diaphragm cuts a small patch out of it,

and altogether it matches 15 kilometers there, on the Moon.

Only a narrow beam of heat rays from a given patch of the Moon passes

through the device.

Here, a beam splits,

is directed to two receivers,

is converted into electricity, and is registered by recorders.

One receiver, a photoresistor,

perceives infrared rays with a wavelength of only 3.5 microns.

The other, a bolometer, only 10 microns.

In this way we get sort of two points - curved rays and thermal radiation.

We calculate the temperature by its incline.

It's interesting how we judge properties by the temperatures of lunar soil.

We judge the properties of lunar soil not by its temperature values,

but by the speed of their changes.

Here's the progress of these temperatures during a total lunar eclipse.

CHANGES OF THE TEMPERATURE OF LUNAR SURFACE DURING A LUNAR ECLIPSE

This is the moment of the beginning of the eclipse.

Here, the Moon is fully in Earth's shadow.

And the temperature of that same patch of the Moon dropped by 200 degrees

in one hour.

It means the Moon warms only at the surface.

Heat doesn't move deeply.

This indicates an extremely low thermal conductivity of lunar soil.

Hence, only one conclusion is possible.

The surfaces of lunar mountains and plains are very porous.

What can be the depth of porous soil on the Moon?

Radio astronomers are trying to explore the depth of porous lunar soil.

A lot has been done in this respect by Professor Vsevolod Troitskiy

of the Gorky Institute of Radio Physics.

The Moon, like any heated body, exudes not only heat rays but also airwaves.

The heat rays come to us from the surface layer and the airwaves from some depth.

Herewith the longer waves come from greater depth.

One can judge the temperatures in the thickness of lunar soil

by the intensity of radio waves.

Lunar radiation is received by this radio telescope.

It's recorded.

But how do you translate these recordings into temperature degrees?

For this, our artificial Moon stands there on the mount - a big black disc.

Its temperature is accurately known to us.

The radiation of the disc has been recorded.

It's being lowered so that the radiation of the clear sky can be recorded.

Later, the telescope is turned,

and the radiation of the real Moon is recorded.

DISC

The recording looks like this. This is the radiation of the disc.

ZERO

MOON

Of the sky. And of the real Moon.

By way of comparing the recordings

we calculate the temperatures in the thickness of the lunar soil.

- What's been given by all of this? - Much has been given.

It turns out that temperature fluctuation is lowered with depth.

On the surface of the Moon,

the temperature changes very much during a lunar month.

At the depth of 20cm it's less.

At the depth of 1.5m it remains constant.

Moreover, if the maximum temperature on the surface is reached during full moon,

this happens several days later at depth.

All this suggests that lunar soil at its thickest has very low thermal conductivity.

By chemical composition it's most likely similar to normal terrestrial rocks.

However, by structure, lunar soil is very different from them.

It's very porous at a depth of at least several meters.

What sort of substance is this?

Professor Sharonov has been engaged in this matter for many years

at the University of Leningrad.

Lunar soil is undoubtedly not a thick layer of loose dust,

as some people assume.

Dust is friable, and, therefore, it wouldn't have been able to hold out

on the steep slopes of lunar mountains.

We tried to find some other natural substance on the surface of the Earth,

similar in properties to lunar soil.

We searched for a substance that is porous on the inside,

that is pitted on the surface, and that has low thermal conductivity.

Scoriae came closest.

Here they are.

These are slag lumps, scattered by a volcano, frozen in flight.

They are very porous, like pumice,

but, at the same time, they're strong enough.

On the plains, the slag lumps could have formed a layer

with the properties of the lunar covering.

However, like dust, they're a friable material,

and therefore, they also can't hold out on the steep slopes of mountains.

Meanwhile, particles of lunar covering indisputably welded together

with the rock on which they're lying.

In the search for the nature of such a welded

and, at the same time, slag shaped lunar covering,

a meteor-slag hypothesis appeared at our observatory.

I hand you over to the author of this hypothesis,

Professor Nadezhda Sytinskaya.

Lunar covering, on different areas of the Moon,

varies by color, although only a little.

Apparently, it formed out of local strains everywhere,

under the influence of external factors, which are common for the Moon.

Small meteorites are likely to blame.

Many of them hit the Moon with such force that they explode.

A part of the evaporated substance condenses and settles

near the explosion site.

A sintered, vesicular mass forms, welded to the bedrock.

A layer of huge thickness could have built up over billions of years,

completely covering all the mountains and plains.

An interesting hypothesis. But the thickness of the layer still isn't clear.

There is no data about its hardness.

You want astronomers to answer everything at once?

They're working. Reflectivity is being researched.

The lighting of lunar soil. Its infrared radiation.

But now perhaps it's faster to clarify all of this on the spot.

After all, cosmonautics will allow us all of this soon.

Cosmonautics.

How beautiful this new area of human activity is.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite.

Already in 1958, rocket launches to the Moon began.

In America, the rocket Thor-Able is at the start.

In its head is a device that's supposed to become a satellite of the Moon.

Thor-Able is leaving the Earth and heading for the Moon.

But better luck next time. The rocket falls in the ocean.

Blast-off again. The device Pioneer has to fly in the vicinity of the Moon.

But the rocket was not strong enough. Not the first. Not the second.

Not the third. It's far.

Oh, how far to the target.

The Soviet Union begins the assault on the Moon.

In January of 1959, Luna 1 is sent flying.

It passes by the Moon at a distance of 1.5 of its diameter.

Brilliant for a first attempt.

Pioneer 4 races after it.

It reaches lunar orbit, but away from the Moon itself.

A sea of fire is raging again.

In September of 1959, Luna 2 starts.

Thirty-six hours pass.

The first hit. A Soviet pennant is delivered to the Moon.

People touch another planet for the first time.

The assault continues. A powerful rocket again goes to the sky.

Luna 3 skirts the Moon.

A new miracle.

By command from Earth, the control system directs cameras at the Moon.

Filming begins.

It's a grand victory of human genius.

Photographs of the dark side of the Moon are received.

Images are transferred by radio from space for the first time.

The great goal requires new means.

In America, the device Ranger is created.

Television cameras for close-up shots of the Moon are installed on it.

The launch system Atlas-Agena rises from the cosmodrome at Cape Kennedy.

In sequence, spacecrafts of American scientists fly into space.

But it's as if the Moon is bewitched.

The Rangers either pass the target

or crash into it after screwing up in flight.

Atlas-Agena goes flying for the seventh time.

This time, Ranger goes straight to the target.

In the program there is a U-turn. Television cameras target the Moon.

Image transfer begins.

The surface of a mysterious planet is rapidly approaching.

It's getting closer. Closer.

Impact.

Ranger crushed.

But thousands of pictures were received.

Details of lunar topography measuring less than 1m are visible on the final ones.

Together with the photographs,

man continues to develop a road to the Moon.

In the Soviet Union, for the first time in history,

the emergence of a man from a ship into outer space has been realized.

This is authentic documentary footage.

It was shot on March 18, 1965

by an automatic camera installed aboard Voskhod 2.

Pavel Belyaev is piloting the ship.

Aleksey Leonov came out of the ship.

A man in interplanetary space. He's living, working, smiling.

So, people will be able to dock ships, mount an orbital station,

transfer from rocket to rocket, get out of emergencies.

A bold and important step has been taken on the way to the Moon.

And Soviet people were the first to take it.

The assault continues.

Next in line is further testing of the elements of space flight,

the delivery of prospecting machines to the Moon.

And only then will man fly from the Earth to the Moon.

SPEED (km/s)

How does he do that?

To reach the Moon, a rocket has to accelerate

for takeoff to a monstrous speed - 11 kilometers per second.

This takes all the fuel that it can accommodate.

When left without fuel, a rocket becomes uncontrollable.

It will crash into the Moon like a shell hits a target.

It will smash to pieces.

Such a landing is called hard. It's no good for living beings.

There's one way out. Instead of this payload doomed to death,

we'll insert a small independent fueled rocket of the same weight.

By backing up, it will slow down its flight and make a soft landing.

But the payload, delivered by such a rocket to the Moon, will of course be a lot less.

But the load still has to be returned to Earth.

So this head, in its turn, should also be an even smaller independent rocket.

It will take off from the Moon.

When approaching Earth, it will apply the brake over the atmosphere,

whereupon its payload will descend by parachute...

to our feet.

This giant flew to the Moon.

And this is what returned.

Today, only a 1,000th part of what was sent can be returned from the Moon.

If we want to return a ton from the Moon,

we have to send a rocket of a thousand tons.

A single cosmonaut cabin is about five tons.

So, in order for one man to fly to the Moon and back,

a rocket weighing 5,000 tons has to be built.

Like this one, with a height of 100 meters.

For now, this is unrealistic.

A workaround is being developed.

One gigantic rocket is replaced by several smaller ones.

The head of the ship, its payload, will be divided into parts.

They will alternately be put into the orbit of Earth satellites.

The parts will be connected there.

The assembled ship will go to the Moon.

This meeting technique can be applied at different stages of the flight.

Here's one of the projects.

To save fuel, the ship itself doesn't land on the Moon.

A part of the crew makes a landing on a special little rocket.

After looking around the cosmonauts take off.

A meeting occurs in orbit.

The cosmonauts move to the ship and return to Earth on it.

There are many options. It's unknown how the first flight will pass.

But man will be on the Moon. He'll be there in the next few years.

Let's dream.

Several years will pass.

On Leninsky Avenue, in Moscow, this is how happy men ride,

after returning from their first flight to the Moon.

We think that there will be three of them.

One, a scientist, for example an astronomer,

the most serious of all, a philosopher.

Another, the pilot of the ship, an engineer,

a purely practical person, a joker.

We'd like the third to be a girl.

Let her be a doctor or a biologist, and, by nature, an artist.

When the solemn noise of welcome subsides,

we'll ask the cosmonauts to tell us simply,

not officially, what it's like there.

Since it was the first meeting of man with the Moon.

USSR LOGBOOK SPACESHIP "LUNA 101"

And so, the cosmonauts lead us past valuable scientific materials

brought from the Moon.

Past tape recorders, collections of minerals, soil samples.

They offer to let us watch their amateur home movies.

Each one filmed what he wanted. From the soul.

Here's a study filmed by a cosmonaut scientist - "The Moon, a Meeting."

The area of the crater Copernicus was chosen in advance as the landing site.

More precisely, its southern spurs.

The first people are approaching another planet for the first time.

An automatic camera conducted continuous shooting during landing.

The greatest moment in the history of life on Earth has been shot.

Billions of years ago, the first living cell appeared on Earth.

A mighty biosphere developed from it, enveloping the planet.

Finally, man appeared.

In former times, life left the oceans for land.

Now it's going beyond the limits of the planet.

A process of irresistible development and propagation of life is occurring.

The first island on the path of man into the vastness of the cosmos is approaching.

We won't find a single new chemical element here.

Laws common to the whole universe operate here.

But there are different measures here.

Different proportions. Different combinations. Different gravity.

Space is in contact with soil,

and this means new minerals, unknown to earthlings.

New landscapes.

Maybe special forms of life.

The first people land on another planet for the first time.

That's all.

How simply this happened.

Now we'll look at what was most interesting for a cosmonaut engineer -

"The Situation on the Moon."

After the flight in a state of zero-gravity, weight finally appeared.

But how much?

Look at how slowly objects fall.

The weight is one sixth of earthly weight.

Objects appear to be hollow, but they retain ordinary earthly inertia.

The hammer hammers in nails normally. But its weight...

We crumpled a newspaper.

Then we tried to put the hammer on it.

The hammer isn't even able to crush it.

It lies on top like a matchbox.

I was personally afflicted by lunar soil.

Its toughness turned out to be lower than expected.

It can't hold a person.

Rovers will have to be made with a very large supporting area.

The worst is that you don't know the depth of this fragile layer.

Near the ship, the depth turned out to be shallow.

But here, by the rock, the bottom can't be reached at all.

A deep crack is probably covered by the fragile layer.

In short, walking is dangerous.

We tried putting on skis. They hold, but it's uncomfortable.

The temperature conditions are very severe.

Here are two ordinary rubber gloves.

I place one in the sun.

I place the other in the shade.

One hour passes,

and this is what happens.

This one melted because of the hundred degree heat.

And this one breaks because of the hundred degree cold.

A vacuum is a very unpleasant thing.

The usual earthly mechanisms don't work here.

Metals stick together. Friction causes parts to jam.

All because the grease immediately evaporates. And there isn't even an air gap.

In our instruments, the bearings are special.

However, they jam if not used for a few days.

But there's a very funny thing in a vacuum. Admire this.

I unwrap a newspaper.

I throw it. It flies without the slightest resistance.

Of course, everything on the Moon is unusual and hard.

But, nonetheless, a person,

though light here, as if he was hollow,

will be the king of nature on the Moon too.

Like so.

And this is a product of a girl cosmonaut -

"Impressions on the Moon."

When we arrived on the Moon, no one met us.

No one was afraid.

We reached a completely indifferent, dead kingdom.

Just as stationary as if it were drawn.

One unwittingly waits for this world to come alive with the sunrise.

But is this an awakening?

Such a strange morning.

There's no rustling of leaves, singing of birds or murmuring of a creek.

This world rejoices silently.

However, not everything is dead. Shadows move here.

They run from the dazzling sun.

They shrink, crawl under rocks.

In the evening, they again sprawl across the plains, climb mountains.

Their kingdom is here - a magical kingdom of shadows.

Usually, the sun passes through the sky past the Earth.

But today, it decided to hide, and the Earth became a marvelous red ring.

A purple light filled the sleeping kingdom.

At that moment, we attempted to awaken it.

One stone flinched. It recoiled, broke away, rolled past its neighbors.

There's fear.

It seems as if a deafening roar, crackling, thunderous beats will reach us.

No, this is a silent world.

A whole planet could fall nearby, but a person wouldn't hear a thing,

as if blocked off by thick glass.

It's an otherworldly, magical kingdom.

It's a world of eternal silence.

For a long time we wandered.

Dull plains stretch for hundreds of kilometers.

But here and there you come upon genuine miracles.

There are no mischievous winds or destructive rains here,

and that's why the whole of nature's inexhaustible imagination

has been preserved.

Scientists say that these are frozen crystals of cooled gases.

How unromantic.

These are wonderful symphonies expressed by the language of silence.

Or they're petrified souls of fabulous heroes, like this Baba Yaga.

You think that this world is dull and colorless. Wrong.

Look, fire once escaped from these fiery depths, carrying mineral wealth.

A black cold reached the flame, it recoiled in fear, it cowered,

and there, in the dark cave, dying, it put its stolen treasure.

From the chilled pores of fiery magma, wonderful crystals grew.

Nature carefully hid them among the rocks.

But man found these stone flowers,

created by the planet from the heat of its heart.

So, man is worthy of them.

Is that it? Not at all.

With our new friends, the cosmonauts, we dream about the future of the Moon.

It will be a habitable Moon, a human Moon.

Decades will pass.

Not only heroic scouts will fly to the Moon,

but also hundreds, thousands of common, selfless toilers.

Man will get a harsh world,

but he's eager to arrive here from his comfortable, blooming Earth.

He's attracted by the hunger for knowledge.

But man is a delicate, hothouse creature.

On the Moon, meteor bombardments, devastating exposure,

and monstrous temperature fluctuations threaten to destroy him.

There's protection from everything.

We, the engineers, will build special shelters on the Moon.

We will produce deep explosions.

We will create inner cavities, and, in them, comfortable homes.

Man will take root in the thickness of the Moon, like a seed in soil.

Then he will rise, like a resilient shoot.

He will rise, and begin his great offensive on lunar soil.

The young science, planetology, will enter a phase of rapid development.

By studying the Moon, by comparing it to the Earth,

the geologist will rise to the highest peaks,

descend into the deepest crevice.

There will be so much romance in their work.

And so much danger.

I imagine a gloomy crater.

It's very dark, like this one.

On its bottom, there's a key to some scientific problem.

People go down to this infernal abyss in a miraculous machine.

Step by step, they move towards their intended purpose.

They will be heroes just like Columbus, Przhevalsky, Lazarev.

Perhaps, they'll be more courageous.

The Moon is more insidious than the jungle,

more unapproachable than the Pamir Mountains, more severe than the Arctic.

A boundless devotion to science.

A triumph of engineering genius.

A majestic tale.

The Moon isn't only a keeper of nature's secrets.

It's also a pantry of hidden treasures.

Streams of valuable ore will gush out of its bowels.

Beautiful gems. Maybe even gold.

Quite possibly, man will find oil in the lunar bowels.

This will help to solve the problem of its origin.

It will be domestic fuel.

And raw materials for synthetic fibers.

At the poles, on the bottom of craters, in eternal shadow, ice deposits are possible.

People will get cheap local water.

And, from the water, oxygen for breathing.

A powerful Earth service will be created on the Moon.

Maybe engineering structures will grow on these rocks.

Beautiful ones. Something like this.

Dozens of radio antennas, telescopes, sensors will be directed at our planet.

A lot is more prominent from the outside.

You bet.

A lunar weather station will save earthlings

from the vicissitudes of weather.

The entire hemisphere of the Earth will be seen

on the screen of some huge picture tube.

Forecasters, by pressing a button,

will be easily carried to any area of the planet.

On the Earth, radio communication between continents is very unstable.

It will, for sure, give way to laser communication via the Moon.

The distant Moon will pull together our earthly continents.

WARSAW - BRAZIL

Global television will get a solid base.

Of course, translation via the Moon will be cheaper and of higher quality

than with the help of satellites and relay links.

MOSCOW - HAVANA

The Moon will also closely connect people.

They will understand each other better.

And this is a heliosector.

The sun will be watched continuously here.

All the processes on its surface will be traced.

This will allow the making of long-term predictions of solar activity.

And give radiation warnings to cosmonauts who will be in the way.

Friends, do you know what's most valuable on the Moon in my opinion?

What?

Emptiness.

That's right. Especially for astronomers.

Of course, a cloudy atmosphere won't eclipse space for us.

In pursuit of the best visibility,

a station for studying cosmic rays will ascend to the sky.

Nearby, in a huge crater,

a radio telescope of unprecedented power will be located.

It will be able to catch the signals of distant civilizations.

The most distant ones.

Some ingenious trap for cosmic dust particles will probably be built.

Powerful instruments will keep track of neighboring galaxies.

The Moon, among other things,

will make a real revolution in the field of optical telescopes.

Reduced weight!

This will allow to greatly increase the size of instruments.

Right.

But the main thing is that there won't be dust, clouds or trembling air jets.

The optics will allow

to increase magnification by hundreds of thousands of times.

Scientists will use television technology.

The observer will be some very serious superman.

I disagree entirely. This funny, shaggy lad.

But one in love with astronomy up to his ears.

One who wields the instrument masterfully.

Of course.

He will make world famous discoveries every minute.

What does he see now?

Mars has probably appeared on the screen.

The young genius is discovering life on it.

Intelligent life.

He sees a Martian city.

And, on a highway, in an elegant car, Aelita is in a hurry.

Knowledge of the Universe will be accelerated by cosmonautic facilities.

Its capabilities will increase on the Moon.

Reduced weight will facilitate take off.

A lack of atmosphere will allow horizontal acceleration.

Solar panels will provide cheap electric power.

A time will come when scientific communities will cover the Moon

with a dense network.

They'll be connected by convenient transportation,

with that same electric power.

From the poles, water will be piped through to the settlements.

Man will plant greenery in greenhouses, among dead rocks.

This will give people vitamin nutrition.

Raw materials for chemistry!

Vitamins. Raw materials. On the Moon there will be

flowers.

Man will lead the improvement of the wild planet on a broad front.

His workplace.

His new house.

Apparently, a special architecture of lunar structures will appear.

We, the engineers, will build them.

In collaboration with artists. Lunar cities have to be beautiful.

People of different professions will fight for the right to live and work in them.

Namely here, by conquering space,

man will strongly feel the power of his intellect.

And he will probably become more aware of his true role in the universe.

Man will stand firm on the Moon.

Of course. And, you know,

I think that a day will come when a child's legs will walk on the streets of this city.

The first human born in this harsh world.

Born for new feats.

One who has never seen the Earth. Here he is.

With him a new generation of people will begin.

Inhabitants of the solar system.

There's so much ahead that's new!

So much interesting work awaits us!

We'll see so much that's beautiful!

Will all of this come true?

It will.

It will be like the great Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said.

"Humanity will not always remain on the Earth.

"But, in pursuit of light and space,

"humanity will at first timidly penetrate beyond the atmosphere,

"and then conquer everything around sunny space."

Have a good trip, man.

THE END