When a movie purports to be about space, it usually contains hostile aliens, some of them buxom and scantily clad. But there have been a handful of films which attempt to depict the actual exploration of space as it is and as it could be.

Destination Moon

Destination Moon, which came out in 1950, was the first attempt to accurately depict what a journey to the Moon would be like. Over ten years before the actual race to the Moon, the movie depicts how an American businessman finances a lunar expedition before the Russians get there first. The film was directed by George Pal from a script co-wrote by Robert Heinlein, very loosely based on his novel Rocket Ship Galileo, though also with elements of The Man Who Sold the Moon. The lunar landscape was imagined by the great space artist Chesley Bonestell. Years before the space age began, the film depicted space walks, space travel, and operations on the lunar surface with a remarkable degree of accuracy. The crew of the ship includes rocket engineer Charles Cargraves, played by Warner Anderson, General Thayer, played by Tom Powers, Jim Barnes, played by John Archer, and Joe Sweeny, played for comic relief by Dick Wesson. Woody Woodpecker puts in an appearance to explain the science of space travel.