Tintin's rocket in the book was based on the V-2 rocket and included design elements like the checkerboard pattern. The rocket lands intact by turning on its axis rather than using separate stages like real moon rockets. This direct ascent method was studied but rejected by NASA, though Tintin's rocket had much more advanced propulsion. The books were written over a decade before the moon landing and tried to depict spaceflight scientifically accurately based on the ideas of the time.
Tintin's rocket in the book was based on the V-2 rocket and included design elements like the checkerboard pattern. The rocket lands intact by turning on its axis rather than using separate stages like real moon rockets. This direct ascent method was studied but rejected by NASA, though Tintin's rocket had much more advanced propulsion. The books were written over a decade before the moon landing and tried to depict spaceflight scientifically accurately based on the ideas of the time.
Tintin's rocket in the book was based on the V-2 rocket and included design elements like the checkerboard pattern. The rocket lands intact by turning on its axis rather than using separate stages like real moon rockets. This direct ascent method was studied but rejected by NASA, though Tintin's rocket had much more advanced propulsion. The books were written over a decade before the moon landing and tried to depict spaceflight scientifically accurately based on the ideas of the time.
Tintins Rocket was originaly based from a V2 Rocket.
The rockets bear
a striking physical resemblance to V-2 rockets, the only rockets to have struck popular imagination by the early 1950s. The similarity even goes as far as including the checkerboard pattern on the hull, which the V-2 designers used to measure the roll rate of a rocket during test flights. No separate lunar lander is shown: The whole ship turns about on its axis, lands tail-down, and returns intact. This is in stark contrast to the real-life Saturn V moon rockets, which, like virtually all modern rockets, were disposable, multistage rockets, and as such would separate into progressively smaller segments during ascent in order to save weight. The approach taken by Tintin's rocket is what NASA called a "direct ascent". Such a mission profile was studied, and discarded by NASA engineers. In Tintin's case, it is made possible by the rocket's extremely efficient propulsion which, more than half a century later, remains much more capable than any real-life rocket propulsion system. Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon were written well over a decade before the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing and several years before manned space flight. Herg was keen to ensure that the books were scientifically accurate, based on ideas about space flight then available. Please do not use for commercial purpose