Der schweigende Stern

I managed to find this movie, conceived and filmed in the 1950s, by surfing YouTube. It was especially interesting to me given all the recent celebrations of the first Moon landing in 1969, fifty years ago. Today we know how rocket launches and space exploration works. Back then they were using a very few facts and making up lots of stuff.

In the story here scientists find an old artifact they trace back to an explosion some years before, and somehow determine that it had to have originated on the planet Venus. Using modern computers and translation technology they discover a message prompting them to believe there is intelligent life on Venus. So they hurriedly set up a mission of several scientists and over a few weeks time travel to Venus. Once there they experienced many surprises, and not all of them returned to Earth.

The story is actually moderately interesting, they find evidence that an intelligent species did live there at one time. But for me the fun was just watching to see how they explained their "science" and mentally compare it to what I now know about the science and physics of space travel. Some of it was pretty good, most of it was not. But it is just a movie, isn't it?