Moon Zero Two: An Overlooked Prophecy?
This 1969 Hammer Films production was an immediate flop because it was overtaken by space reality, then became bait for MST3K and finally, in light of current events, seems to be recovering relevancy just as NASA once again focuses on lunar travel.
Why a flop? Moon Zero Two was rushed into production by Hammer head Michael Carreras just as the Apollo Program was unfurling across the Atlantic in the USA. Carreras also wrote the filmscript, based on a story by Martin Davison, Frank Hardman, and aviation thriller author Gavin Lyall. It is based on a 2020s theme, space mining, at a time when such ideas were being bandied about, but when we knew so comparatively little about the moon and asteroids than we do nowadays. Unfortunately for Hammer, it was beaten to the punch by NASA and appeared shortly after Neil Armstrong and crew stunned the world by actually landing on the moon's surface. Even the director, Roy Ward Baker, whose credits include the cult sci fi masterpiece Quatermass and the Pit, bemoaned the unfortunate timing of its release, as he acknowledged many other complaints about the movie. The eponymous spacecraft, dubbed a moon ferry, was a virtual copy of the Apollo lunar landing vehicle, though employed in the film as a combination junk collector (rather like the brief American NBCTV series Quark) and asteroid retriever. With unbearably uncomfortable costumes (the near-nude shower scene must have been a relief for the actors), sets that appeared to be tacked together out of styrofoam and cardboard, and a lead actor (James Olsen) who bore too much of a resemblance to real astronauts, rather than Flash Gordon, it is no wonder that critics generally described this film as a disaster.
Nevertheless, if we suppress the desire to chuckle along with Joel and the Bots at its shortcomings (admittedly the fake landing in Capricorn One was much more convincing than the tech in Moon Zero Two), we discover that the story line seems to be playing out with uncanny similarity to today's scenarios. What we hear from space entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow eerily resembles the schemes of astro-villain J. J. Hubbard (played by decorated character actor Warren Mitchell, the British original of Archie Bunker). Hubbard wants to capture a mineral-rich asteroid and land it on the moon, almost precisely mirroring what NASA is proposing to do in coming decades. This is brought into sharp focus by the fact that NASA's DART mission did indeed succeed in altering the orbit of a small asteroid, Dimorphos, around its larger partner Didymos through a directed impact.
Now, DART is not involved directly in space mining. Its stated purpose is to prepare for the possibility of saving life on Earth if it is threatened by future collision with a larger object, such as the meteor that created the Chicxulub crater and caused the Cretaceous extinction event. Still, NASA discussions in the past have included mention of commercial space mining that would involve moving an asteroid into low lunar orbit or landing. Hubbard in Moon Zero Two was pursuing an asteroid composed essentially of sapphire. Somewhat like NASA, he explains his interest in the jewels as utilitarian rather than purely lucrative, in order to manufacture superior rocket engines to colonize neighboring worlds. On the contrary, the film's hero, Olsen's Bill Kemp, cuts right to the heart of the matter when he reminds heroine Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell) in the finale that her father's mining claim, where the asteroid and Hubbard crashed, is now worth an untold fortune.
Economics is what brought the Apollo program to an end decades ago. It is also what brought Elon Musk's enterprises, in the form of multiple-use launch vehicles, to revive the agency's renewed interest in the moon and beyond. Not to forget the fact that China and other powers have also entered the competition. Make no mistake that the Scramble for the Moon, a parallel to the nineteenth-century Scramble for Africa, is already motivating many geopolitical and geo-economic decisions on Earth, including the interest in US, West European, and East Asian nations in keeping rivals Russia and China tied down with endless conflicts in neighboring areas. Anyone who has witnessed the tides at sea knows that Luna can exert a very distant effect on the conditions that lie at our very feet.
Moon Zero Two ends with a combined punishment and hurrah for the glories of capitalism. Taplin will be a trillionaire, Kemp will see the inside of her bedroom, and the ubiquitous Space Corporation (which was just about to yank Kemp's license to fly, before he did away with Hubbard and gang) will get to plant colonies (colonias?) on Mercury and Jupiter's moons. Can we expect such mixed results in the wake of DART's success? New private space ventures are springing up in places such as Japan and India to add to the previous players. We must continue to monitor progress below and above our atmosphere to find out. The renewed relevance of Moon Zero Two may redirect our attention to other space mining ventures in films like Total Recall, Outland, Alien, and Avatar, especially as the latter is about to spawn its first, and perhaps not only, sequel. As another classic ended by saying, "Watch the skies, keep watching the skies."
