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Mik Kanrokitoff: Did he watch Tintin's Moon voyage?

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Leviticus
Member
#11 · Posted: 31 Jan 2009 12:04
Balthazar:
Whereas if he wore a space suit (with just half a minute's worth of oxygen in the breathing cylinder) he'd be able to pump the airlock's oxygen back into the inner part of the rocket ship before opening the outer door and jumping out.

Is it possible to pump the air back into the inner part of the rocket though?

I find it undoubtly impossible that Wolff survived. What would the books be like then? Wolff reappears on Earth, Tintin and Co. welcome him with open arms? Yeah right!
Balthazar
Moderator
#12 · Posted: 31 Jan 2009 14:26
Leviticus
Is it possible to pump the air back into the inner part of the rocket though?

I can't see why it wouldn't be technically possible, given that scientists have been able to make vaccuum chambers for the last two hundred years or so. I don't know whether Calculus designed this technlogy into the moon rocket airlock door system, but it would seem like a good idea to me. Otherwise you'd lose a whole airlock-full of precious air every time you opened the outer air-lock door to go out of the rocket whilst on the moon.

I'm not sure whether or not airlocks on real spacecraft work that way, eg: when the Apollo mission's astronauts left the lunar modules to walk on the Moon, or when astronauts leave space shuttles for a space walk. Maybe someone knows.

But I agree with you that Hergé intended Wolff to be definitely dead. As discussed previously, on this thread or another, Hergé said so in an interview. He apparently added the "by some miracle, I might survive" line somewhat reluctantly, to soften the controversy that an out-and-out suicide might cause in a children's book in Catholic Belgium.

You're right that regrdless of whther a UFO rescue would have been technically possible, having Wolff turn up alive with Kanrokitoff in Flight 714 would be corny and would wreck the point and the poignacy of Wolff's story in the Moon books.

But on the main point of this thread, Hergé does at least mention the Moon missions at the start of Flight 714 - it's why they're going to Sidney, of course - so he may have intended a space-travel theme connection between the Moon books and this one.

So maybe the idea that the aliens were secretly watching Calculus's moon mission back in the 1950s isn't too far fetched (or at least no more far-fetched than the the aliens being in a Tintin book in the first place).

I'm very glad Hergé didn't go back to the Moon books and incorporate this though, with glimpses of the flying saucer behind the lunar mountains! It would have wrecked those books' realism.
cigars of the beeper
Member
#13 · Posted: 31 Jan 2009 15:39
I still like my idea that the aliens and Kanrokitoff arranged everything so that they could meet those who went to the moon, but that's just my idea, which I don't think is shared by anyone else.
sidrat42
Member
#14 · Posted: 14 Jan 2010 01:41
I liked to think there might be a connection between the aliens of Flight 714 and the mysterious trail of footprints that the Thom(p)sons came across on the moon, and which were never satisfactorily explained!
Furienna
Member
#15 · Posted: 6 Mar 2019 15:24
sidrat42:
I liked to think there might be a connection between the aliens of Flight 714 and the mysterious trail of footprints that the Thom(p)sons came across on the moon

But... Wasn't that explained that they had simply wandered around in circles, so they found their own footprints?
snowybella
Member
#16 · Posted: 6 Mar 2019 23:06
Furienna:
Wasn't that explained that the Thom(p)sons had simply wandered around in circles

I think that sidrat42 meant that he hopes that the footprints the Thom(p)sons found weren't their 'prints, but those of some sort of aliens.
mct16
Member
#17 · Posted: 7 Mar 2019 12:42
A friend of mine recently showed me a copy of Tintin magazine, published on the 21st of October, 1986.
This includes a two-page comic strip called Hans, a space and time-travel series similar to Valerian & Laureline or Doctor Who, written by André-Paul Duchâteau, and drawn by Grzegorz Rosinski.

Hans and his companion Orchidée come from the far future, but have been sent back into the past to Earth's moon (an operation code-named Destination Moon). They explore the moon, which Orchidée compares to a "black island", and even see a moon rock in the form of a "lotus".

At that moment they witness Tintin's rocket land and they return quickly to their own ship, which is well hidden. From there, Hans and Orchidée watch as Tintin and Haddock take their first steps on the moon together. Hans then receives an urgent call from Mission Control. He tells them not to shout so loud through the earphones since they are "breaking my ear"!

The call is about preventing a disaster which could alter the course of history and thus the future of Hans and Orchidée's timeline.
Using his ship's equipment, Hans manages to divert the landing of a "shooting star" and prevent it from crushing Tintin and Haddock (this is the incident seen on page 27 of Explorers on the Moon).

Later, when the Thom(p)sons find the footprints they had left behind, Hans and Orchidée worry about how this will affect the timeline.
However, when the Thom(p)sons report to Calculus, he dismisses the prints as tracks left behind by themselves - though Tintin does speculate about others being on the moon (see page 31 of "Explorers").

Hans and Orchidée then watch as the rocket leaves for Earth, Hans regretting that the rules forbid actually meeting people of the past and thus he never got the chance to become acquainted with such wonderful heroes.

So there you have it, the footprints and other events were not the doings of aliens - but travellers from another comic strip!
snowybella
Member
#18 · Posted: 8 Mar 2019 00:17
mct16

Wow - that's a really interesting piece of Tintin-related short comic! Thanks for taking the trouble to write the synopsis! Does it also suggest that when Jorgen is on board, the travellers stop the rocket from falling to the side?
mct16
Member
#19 · Posted: 8 Mar 2019 12:00
Maybe they did, but this scene is left out of the 2-page story due to lack of space.
number1fan
Member
#20 · Posted: 9 Mar 2019 16:19
Briony Coote:
It is tempting to think that they rescued Wolff, and maybe even did something to stop the tottering rocket falling on its side without our heroes realising.

That's very good thinking.

Briony Coote:
What do others think? Could Mik Kanrokitoff and his spaceship been quietly watching the moon voyage?

Imagine that when Tintin & Cº went aboard the UFO, Wolff would have been there greeting them!

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