CONQUEST OF SPACE. Sci-fi that inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey

Conquest of Space is not a very good film, but it has earned a prominent place in the annals of science fiction cinema.

The 1980s. Humanity has built a modern space station, “The Wheel,” orbiting the Earth; nearby, the construction of a giant spacecraft intended for trips to the Moon is underway. The designer and commander of the station is American astronaut Colonel Merritt. His son, Barney, a captain, has been aboard “The Wheel” for a year, but he wants to return to Earth to be with his wife. Meanwhile, a government envoy arrives at the station with new orders – Merritt is promoted to General and appointed commander of the spacecraft, and the mission’s objective changes: instead of the Moon, the astronauts will now travel to Mars. The spacecraft can carry only five people; Barney volunteers as the second officer, and the crew is completed by three of Merritt’s trusted men: tough New Yorker Siegel, Japanese scientist Imoto, and Austrian engineer Fodor. During the journey, the astronauts face many challenges, and Merritt undergoes a psychological crisis that threatens to jeopardize the mission.

American-Hungarian producer George Pal was one of the fathers of the success of the film Destination Moon (1950) by Irving Pichel – the first American production to address the scientific challenges of manned space travel. Conquest of Space, another film produced by Pal, continues these themes, but in a slightly different manner. The film’s title is taken from the popular science book The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley (text) and Chesley Bonestell (illustrations). The book has no plot or characters, so for the film, the screenwriters – there were four of them! – invented a story about a group of astronauts traveling to Mars. The set design was based on Bonestell’s illustrations, which originally appeared in Collier’s magazine and the book Across the Space Frontier. The artist was also hired to create the matte paintings for the film.

The filmmakers envisioned Conquest of Space to be realistic and scientifically credible. To achieve this, they drew from the work of Wernher von Braun: his book The Mars Project and articles published in Collier’s. Director Byron Haskin claimed that von Braun – the German engineer, SS officer, and member of the Nazi Party who, after the war, became one of the leading figures in the U.S. space program, while his less useful compatriots were tried and hanged at Nuremberg – was also regularly present on set as a scientific consultant. However, the physics in the film is at least questionable: space vessels making sounds in space, a blazing asteroid racing through the vacuum, an inefficient energy design for a station necessary to build a spacecraft in orbit, an astronaut digging in the Martian soil with his bare hands, and a plant growing on the same planet despite extreme cold.

One might overlook all of this if it weren’t for the rest: a flimsy plot, stereotypical characters, rustling-paper dialogue, and wooden acting from performers playing characters who are simply unbelievable in every sense. Leading the charge is Sergeant Siegel – a Brooklyn wise guy who, despite lacking scientific training, is one of the leading specialists aboard the orbital space station, and later becomes a member of the Mars mission crew. But the most absurd moment of Conquest of Space is the speech of the Japanese astronaut (played by an American of Chinese descent – Netflix would be proud!) about how Japan entered World War II because it was struggling with a lack of natural resources and living space. To some extent and in a greatly simplified manner, his argument holds some truth, but extrapolating such conclusions to the motivations behind space travel comes off as unconvincing.

Arguably the most interesting aspect of Conquest of Space is its visual layer and the influence it had on cinema, especially on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When Kubrick was preparing to work on his science fiction masterpiece, he attempted to watch practically all the science fiction films made up to that point. It is almost certain that he came across Haskin’s film, as the similarities are too great to be considered coincidental: the image of a circular space station, antenna repairs during a spacewalk, audiovisual transmissions used for communication with Earth, an astronaut’s body drifting in space, and even a crew member (human in Haskin’s film, artificial in Kubrick’s) trying to eliminate other members of the mission. Kubrick achieved better results, as he had a bigger budget and better screenwriters, namely Arthur C. Clarke and himself. Thus, Conquest of Space can be seen as a modest prelude to the later masterpiece.