Space Race
3 . ONE SMALL STEP
In the Anglo-Western world , there are eight phases of the moon : New Moon , New Crescent , First Quarter , New Gibbous , Full Moon , Old Gibbous , Last Quarter , and Old Crescent .
Phase 1 : New Moon
Going backwards in time , we begin in the dark . The dark of a new moon . In the darkened theatre with Georges Méliès ’, A Trip to the Moon ( 1902 ). The NASA Mars recruitment posters find their roots in Méliès and his complicated film celebrating the imagination , wonder , and scientific ingenuity that has increased our knowledge of the universe beyond Earth , but also puts on display important ethical-political questions that often get ignored in all of the excitement .
A Trip to the Moon is a technological marvel , its cinematography , special effects , and narrative structure groundbreaking for its time and influential over the century that came after . In early movies around the turn of the twentieth century , the camera was typically stationary , fixed to a position as if a spectator in the audience at a theatrical production . But Méliès innovated . The most famous scene in the film�the rocket landing in the eye of the moon�is one in which we see from the perspective of the travelers to the moon rather than as a member of the audience . ( See figure 5 .) That is , we see the moon getting closer and closer to us as if we were one of the scientists on the rocket . This is thematically important , too , for multiple reasons . The landing on the moon is actually presented twice in the film : first the fantastical scene of the moon with a face where we are the scientists , and then the timeline rewinds and we see the landing again , but in a more “ realistic ” way . And so we have to ask : what meaning is here ; why is the director forcing us to take up the scientists ’ viewpoint by
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