The very real rocket from 2013, "Falcon 9".
Cinema rocket "Kosmokrator", from Der Schweigende Stern.
While on The Guardian's website -- www.guardian.co.uk -- I opened a link to a story on the SpaceX "Falcon 9" rocket and Dragon spacecraft: energize. The vessel was launched successfully yesterday, but there are technical problems which have delayed the capsule from docking with the International Space Station (ISS).
When I saw the article there was no delay from me in noticing the affixed picture's uncanny resemblance to the rocket lift-off scene from the 1960 East German/Polish science fiction film, Der Schweigende Stern. The "Kosmokrator" certainly is one of cinema's coolest space vee-hicles.
4 comments:
The setting is eerily similar. One design aspect of fictional rockets that is conspicuously missing from real ones, though, is the notion of pylons supporting widely spaced engines. It looks gorgeous in models, but in reality if one engine cuts out, the vehicle spins wildly and crashes. Clustered engines are visually boring, but the vehicle can survive losing at least one.
You are right. The film's designer, Alfred Hirschmeier, undoubtedly took his inspiration from the flying buttresses of Gothic churches.
I love that old movie, 'First Spaceship On Venus" or "The Silent Star'.
I, too, love this flick. It's a gem.
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