From Pitchblende to Rockets 1789–1951

The story of Sprodj begins with a stone. In 1789 the chemist Henrïc Klaproth identified uranium in a fragment of Syldavian pitchblende. His great-grandson later found the mine in the Zymylpathians, and at Sprodj, deep in the same mountains, the Kingdom built the centre that would work the ore.

In 1946 Muskar XII decided to invest heavily in scientific research and had the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre developed near Mount Zstopnohle, the highest peak of the Zymylpathians. For a country of 642,000 inhabitants, the effort was considerable. By 1950 test rockets were rising from the Sprodj range, and in 1951 the King toured the Centre, guided by Professor Calculus, Head of its Astronautical Section. Operational command rested with General Baxter, director of the Centre, who coordinated the range, security cordons and military liaison around the scientific work.

Aerial colour view of the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre: long concrete halls, a tall chimney and a radio mast in a wide valley ringed by snow-capped mountains
The Sprodj Atomic Research Centre in its Zymylpathian valley, 1952
A black, glossy lump of pitchblende resting in an old wooden specimen box lined with green velvet
The reactor hall of the atomic pile: a tall cylindrical pile under travelling cranes, technicians in orange protective suits at the control desks and on the chequered floor
Colour portrait of General Baxter at Sprodj in 1952, wearing pale green Centre overalls with the atomic research badge, launch infrastructure behind him
A chequered test rocket lifting off from its scaffold gantry at the Sprodj range, newsreel cameramen at their tripods in the snow in the foreground, snow-covered mountains behind, 1950

Pitchblende, the atomic pile, ground command and an early test launch at Sprodj

The Rocket 1950–1952

Before it carried anyone, the design had already flown. The programme was known as XFLR, and its test rocket, the X-FLR 6, was sent around the Moon to photograph its far side. On its way back, foreign agents seized it; rather than let it fall into their hands, the Centre blew it up. By then the atomic motor, the lunar trajectory and the radio-control system had all been proven.

What those agents knew, they had learned at Sprodj itself. The Centre was being worked from within by a foreign network based in Klow, which obtained first the complete staff list of the Main Workshop, and then the technical documents themselves, carried out through a ventilator grating. Protective measures were substantially tightened. The source of the leak was not established that year.

Funded in secret and developed under government protection, the rocket that would carry the crew was conceived and built under the direction of Professor Calculus. Its red-and-white chequered silhouette has since become one of the Kingdom's most familiar images: every Lunar Triumph Day, schoolchildren are required to draw it.

The lunar rocket on its pad seen from below: the red-and-white chequered hull and its three fins rising between two steel service gantries, crews in white coveralls on the walkways and at an open access hatch in the hull, the Moon visible at upper right
The lunar rocket on its gantry at Sprodj, weeks before the flight of 3 June 1952
Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

The 3D model could not be loaded.

Technical data XFLR lunar rocket (1952)
Height
Nearly 75 metres
Stages
1: a single-stage, fully reusable rocket
Main motor
Atomic (plutonium), for the crossing, with continuous acceleration; liquid hydrogen heated above 2,400 °C as propellant; could be stopped and restarted in flight
Auxiliary motor
Chemical, for take-off and landing, so as not to contaminate Earth's atmosphere
Propellants
Nitric acid, aniline and liquid hydrogen
Radiation shielding
Shielding against the radiation from the plutonium
Heat protection
Calculite, an alloy of Professor Calculus’s invention
Speed
45 km/s
Earth–Moon crossing
About 4 hours
On-board gravity
Weight from the atomic motor's continuous acceleration; magnetic floor and soles used when the motor was stopped
Structure
3 oversized stabilising fins, telescopic landing gear, lowered centre of gravity
Crew spaces
Control deck, reclining seats for the phases of acceleration (a fighter-pilot arrangement), pressurised crew chamber
Livery
Red nose and fins, red-and-white chequered fuselage; the roll pattern comes from German V-2 test flights, where it made rotation visible from the ground
Digital model
Rocket by readerror · GLB
Scale figure
Low Poly Male Base, wh_nerevar (CC BY 4.0)
Backdrop
NASA/JSC / NARA, AS11-44-6553
1952. The rocket that would carry the crew, conceived and built under the direction of Professor Calculus. Nearly 75 metres tall; the figure beside the fins is 1.80 m.

Its performance still astonishes. The adaptation's own figures put the crossing at between three and a half and four hours, against about 73 hours for Apollo 11: to date, no crewed mission to the Moon has come close. In his 2024 reconstruction, the physicist Jacques Treiner makes it shorter still: 192 minutes.

Colour transparency of Muskar XII in a dark suit beside Professor Calculus in a white coat, who gestures towards the red-and-white chequered fin and the cluster of motors of an early rocket in the assembly hall, officials seen from behind in the foreground
The control deck of the lunar rocket: a circular room of green instrument panels and dials around a central column, a technician in overalls at the controls
The crew cabin of the lunar rocket: bunks along both walls, a narrow table with papers down the middle, two men in overalls at work

The lunar rocket in the making, 1951–1952

The Crew

The official mission had four members: the Belgian reporter Tintin, Captain Archibald Haddock, Professor Calculus, who held the mission's scientific direction, and the Syldavian engineer Frank Wolff, the least known of the four. Three of the four were Belgian; Wolff was the only Syldavian. Snowy, Tintin's wire fox terrier, flew with them as planned. The manifest was less reliable than the mission planners imagined.

Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Crew register · 03/06/52

Colour portrait of Professor Calculus in a white laboratory coat, round spectacles and moustache, standing before the riveted metal hull of a pressurised gondola
Cuthbert Calculus Head of the Astronautical Section
Colour portrait of Frank Wolff, smiling, with round spectacles and a moustache, in a green work coat before a riveted metal hull with a porthole, colleagues in white coats behind
Frank Wolff Assistant Engineer / Physicist
Colour portrait of Tintin, smiling, with his fair quiff, in a blue work coat with a rocket badge on the pocket, before a riveted metal hull with a porthole and a launch gantry, colleagues in white coats behind
Tintin Mission Specialist
Surface Operations
Colour portrait of Captain Haddock, bearded, pipe in mouth, in a peaked captain's cap with an anchor badge, a blue roll-neck sweater bearing a black anchor and a navy work jacket, looking aside, before a riveted metal hull with a porthole and a launch gantry
Captain Archibald Haddock Mission Specialist
Flight Operations
Colour portrait of Snowy, a white wire fox terrier, tongue out, before a riveted metal hull with a porthole and a launch gantry, staff in white coats and helmets behind
Snowy Canine Crew Member / Mission Mascot
Photographic service, Sprodj Atomic Research Centre · Archival portraits

Lift-off 3 June 1952

The rocket lifted off from Sprodj at 1:34 in the morning. The Thom(p)sons, who had understood 1:34 in the afternoon, were still aboard when it left, which is how they came to make the journey unannounced.

Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Passenger record · 03/06/52

Colour portrait of Thomson, in a black bowler hat and a mustard-yellow work jacket with a red rocket badge on the pocket, white shirt and black tie, his moustache turned up at the ends, before a riveted metal hull with a porthole and a launch gantry, staff in white coats behind
Thomson Security Liaison
Unscheduled Passenger
Colour portrait of Thompson, in a black bowler hat and a mustard-yellow work jacket with a red rocket badge on the pocket, white shirt and black tie, his moustache cut straight, before a riveted metal hull with a porthole and a launch gantry, staff in white coats behind
Thompson Security Liaison
Unscheduled Passenger
Photographic service, Sprodj Atomic Research Centre · Archival portraits

The Outward Flight 3 June

Captain Haddock used the commotion to get some privacy: he sent the Thom(p)sons upstairs, saying he had important work to do, the kind best done alone. His treatise on astronomy was hollowed out, and hid a bottle of whisky brought aboard against the regulations.

An old book lying open on a steel bench, its pages cut away to form a cavity holding a bottle of Loch Lomond single malt; the left page reads TRAITÉ D'ASTRONOMIE beneath a small Saturn. Around it: an enamel mug bearing the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre seal, star charts on a clipboard, a black instrument case, a ship's log and a folder marked SPRODJ 1952.
Contraband: the Captain's Loch Lomond, Sprodj, 1952

He did not wait long to sample it. Up above, meanwhile, one of the Thom(p)sons' walking sticks caught on a lever of the control panel and pulled it: the nuclear motor stopped, and with it the thrust that stood in for gravity aboard. Everything not fastened down began to float, the crew included.

Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Flight deck · 3 June 1952 · behaviour of a free liquid

Gravity versus surface tension

Cut the thrust of the nuclear motor and observe the sample. Then restore it.

Apparent gravity 1 g Nuclear motor: nominal thrust Master switch. Operation outside procedure prohibited.

Acceleration: 1 g. The liquid rests in the glass.

Illustrated experiment: the disturbance is imposed. The spherical reference assumes a non-rotating drop with minimal surface area. Wetting and adhesion also affect liquid in contact with the glass. Deformation, splash, contact and automatic refill are schematic.

What the experiment shows With the motor off, Haddock and the objects float: they are weightless. Gravity still acts, but carries the rocket and its contents along together. Nothing holds them against the floor. When the motor restarts, the floor pushes against them again: their apparent weight returns. The whisky needs a disturbance to leave the glass; surface tension then rounds the released drop.

Logbook, 3 June 1952; Professor Calculus’s calculations, Astronautical Section, Sprodj; Hergé’s adaptation, Explorers on the Moon, p. 6 · H. Rodot, C. Bisch and A. Lasek, “Zero-gravity simulation of liquids in contact with a solid surface”, Acta Astronautica 6 (1979), 1083–1092.

When the motor was restarted, everyone came back down to the floor. Drunk and furious, the Captain left a note, went out through the airlock and briefly became a satellite of the asteroid Adonis.

I'm fed up with your rotten rocket! I'm going home to Marlinspike.
Haddock's note
Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Adonis · asteroid 2101 · outward flight, 3 June 1952

Adonis, and a satellite by the name of Haddock

Where Adonis was, and the speeds needed to orbit it.

Slide the date. Positions between samples are linearly interpolated; distances are approximate. The line joins Earth to Adonis.

What the simulation shows An asteroid whose orbit crosses Earth’s orbit is not always close to Earth. Its position on the date matters as much as the shape of its orbit.

Method and sources

Positions of Adonis and the Earth: JPL Horizons, heliocentric ecliptic J2000, sampled every 30 days from 1936 to 2037 and every day around the four pinned moments; the plot drops the small inclination (1.32°) and the distance readout keeps it. Planet orbits from J2000 mean elements. Adonis’s ellipse from JPL’s elements: a 1.87 au, e 0.764, perihelion 0.44 au, aphelion 3.31 au, 937 days.

The 1936 pass: 2.22 million km on 7 February by JPL’s close-approach data (the daily samples drawn here give about 2.3); JPL’s first recorded observation is 21 February. On 3 June 1952 it stood about 396 million km from the Earth, receding at 26 km/s. Next pass: 7 February 2036, 5.34 million km. The positions here are JPL’s integrated ephemeris for orbit solution 53, which is fitted to the observations from 1936 onward, not a two-body propagation.

The sandbox: two bodies, the asteroid a sphere of density 2.0 g/cm³ (an assumption; no measured density exists), at the Professor’s mile (1.61 km) or JPL’s 0.6 km diameter. Orbital speed √(GM/r), escape √(2GM/r); the path is integrated for up to 48 hours. At the Professor’s size an orbit 300 m up needs about 0.5 m/s; at JPL’s, about 0.2 m/s.

Computation: Raluca Zieverdwoud, Astronautical Section, Sprodj Atomic Research Centre · Ephemeris: NASA/JPL-Caltech Horizons and Small-Body Database (2101 Adonis, solution 53)

Tintin went out after him, secured to the external ladder. Calculus brought the rocket closer and cut the motor, and Tintin lassoed the Captain. But Adonis was now drawing the rocket in: the motor had to be restarted while both were still outside, held by the rope. They made it back to the airlock.

Haddock had just made the first spacewalk; Tintin, the first rescue.

The Landing 3 June

A few hours later the rocket set down in the crater Hipparchus, and Tintin became the first human being to step onto the lunar surface.

For the first time in the history of mankind there is an EXPLORER ON THE MOON!
Tintin

The lunar mission sparked an unprecedented wave of national enthusiasm throughout the Kingdom. Citizens gathered in front of the windows of the few shops equipped with televisions to watch the live broadcast from the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre. After twelve minutes the lunar signal was interrupted and replaced by a rerun of the game show The Pelican's Wheel.

The outage caused a national scandal. Certain internal reports from ZEPO (Zekrett Politzs), leaked to and widely circulated by the press, suggested possible Bordurian interference. A parliamentary inquiry was launched and several high-ranking officials at the national broadcaster tendered their resignations. The true cause of the interruption was never established with certainty.

Black and white photograph of citizens gathered in the street watching television through a shop window
Crowd in front of a shop window on Horia Street, Klow, 3 June 1952
Black and white photograph of a television studio: a host in an embroidered folk costume gestures at a large prize wheel numbered 5 to 100, a crowned pelican at its centre, beneath a sign reading Dze Râdcz fan dze Pelikancz; on the right, a young woman in traditional dress; on the left, a folk band in front of a painted castle backdrop; in the foreground, a studio camera and the production crew, seen from behind.
The set of The Pelican's Wheel, the game show that replaced the lunar signal

On the Moon 3–6 June

Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Landing site · 03/06/52

Where the rocket landed

Locate the landing site, then explore the surrounding terrain.

The Moon as seen from Sprodj on the evening of 3 June 1952, waxing and lit from the right. The crater Hipparchus is circled just south-east of the centre of the visible face, Ptolemaeus beside it, and the Apollo 11 site is marked in the Sea of Tranquility.

Hipparchuslanding, 03/06/52

Ptolemaeusthe caves, 06/06/52

Apollo 11landing, 20/07/69 · Sea of Tranquility

Close-up of the craters Hipparchus and Ptolemaeus in the light of the evening of 3 June 1952, with the landing point marked at the centre of Hipparchus and a dashed line from there to Ptolemaeus for the Moon tank.

Hipparchus · 144 km

Landing point5.36° S, 4.91° E

Ptolemaeus · 154 km

06/06/52: by Moon tank to the caves

The Moon as seen from Sprodj on the evening of 03/06/52, 78% lit.

The light that evening: at Hipparchus the Sun had risen on 31/05/52 and stood 45° above the eastern horizon. Relief exaggerated ×2.5.

Reading the map Hipparchus and Ptolemaeus lie on the side of the Moon visible from Earth.

Apollo 11 landed 590 km away. Phase and orientation computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris for 03/06/52 at 22:00 SRT, from Sprodj.
Imagery: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (LRO: LROC colour, LOLA relief), rendered for this page.

The plan had been to remain for a full lunar day, fourteen Earth days; the crew spent six and a half, from 3 to 9 June. Professor Calculus's logbook records the work hour by hour. The mission log at the end of this page sets each moment against the page of Hergé’s adaptation where it can be found.

The unloading was finished before midnight on the first day; Calculus and Frank Wolff had begun installing the observatory while Tintin and Captain Haddock started assembling a Moon tank.

Imagine! Here we are, strolling on the surface of the Moon, where the hand of man has never set foot!
Thompson

The telescope, the cameras and the theodolite followed; Calculus and Wolff gave their days to cosmic rays and astronomical observations, entered as they went in Record Books I and II. By the evening of 5 June the logbook notes the tank ready for use.

On 6 June, Wolff, Haddock, Tintin and Snowy drove it to the caves near the crater Ptolemaeus, where they found stalactites and, at the bottom of a crevasse into which Snowy had fallen, ice; Tintin brought him out.

Sabotage 6 June

Colonel Boris Jorgen, the Sceptre traitor of 1938, now in Borduria's service, had been hidden in the hold since before the launch. On 6 June, during the tank's outing to Ptolemaeus, he tried to seize the rocket and leave the others behind. The attempt failed, but it left the rocket damaged. Before the crew could leave the Moon, it would have to be repaired there.

Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

The 3D model could not be loaded.

Technical data Moon tank (1952)
Type
Reconnaissance tank, shipped in parts, assembled on the Moon
Dimensions
4.7 m long, 2.5 m wide
Cabin
Pressurised and insulated
Running gear
Tracks
Motor
Electric, battery-powered; emergency batteries
Endurance
48 hours
Oxygen
Reserve in cylinders
Equipment
Radar, radio link with the rocket, 2 searchlights, winch, hook
Tools
Shovel and pick, stowed on the sides
Fate
Left on the Moon on 9 June 1952; its oxygen cylinders taken back aboard the rocket as the last reserves; a sealed message inside for those who follow
6 June 1952. Coming back early from the caves near Ptolemaeus, Professor Calculus, Captain Haddock and the Thom(p)sons watch from the tank as the rocket rises without them.
Black-and-white photograph of Colonel Boris Jorgen standing in a palace doorway, a monocle at his eye, in a frogged hussar-style dress tunic with a fur-trimmed pelisse over one shoulder and a white crossbelt across his chest; a motor car and onlookers at the edges of the frame
Looking up inside the hold of the lunar rocket: a riveted aluminium shaft with pipe runs colour-coded green, cream, grey and red, a ladder of steel rungs climbing the wall to an open circular hatch with a lit compartment beyond, brass conduit, a junction box and a round inspection port

Jorgen in 1938, and the hold he travelled in

Air for Four 6–9 June

The rocket had been provisioned with air for four people and a dog. It carried six known passengers, not counting Snowy; Jorgen made seven. From the outbound flight, Captain Haddock, forbidden his pipe "on the pretext of saving oxygen", told the weeping Thom(p)sons to stop snivelling: "you're making carbon dioxide!" Rationing the air for six people, Professor Calculus then cut the fourteen-day stay to ten days. He did not yet know that a seventh was breathing.

The repairs would draw on the same air, and Calculus's estimate left no margin:

My preliminary estimate is that it will take us at least a hundred hours to effect the necessary repairs. To that must be added the time for our return journey. We have oxygen supplies for a hundred hours at the most, which means that having used our last resources to re-launch the rocket, we shall run the risk of arriving on Earth as corpses.
Professor Calculus

The repairs took seventy-two hours. The tank and the optical instruments stayed on the Moon; only their oxygen cylinders came back aboard, as the last reserves. Before coming back on board, Tintin radioed that a sealed message had been left inside the tank for those who might one day follow in their steps. Seven people left the Moon on 9 June at 16:52. The arithmetic left only one variable within the crew's reach: the number of people breathing.

The Moon tank in a workshop at Sprodj: a pale blue tracked vehicle with three glass observation domes, a dish antenna and searchlights on the hull, three technicians in overalls working on it, tool crates and gas cylinders around the bay and a large conical metal section on a stand behind
A pale vesicular rock split in two, resting on foil in a steel pan beneath a laboratory balance whose counter reads 7241500, a metal scale cube beside it, more foil-wrapped fragments in a tray to the right, tweezers, a brush and a specimen case on the bench

What stayed on the Moon, and what came back

Frank Wolff 9 June

Frank Wolff, an engineer in the Main Workshop, was the man the Klow network held inside. In debt, he had been approached by Miller, the foreign agent who ran it. An arrangement followed, and then the technical documents. The 1950 leak came from him.

On the way home Jorgen turned his pistol on the crew. Wolff stepped in; the gun went off in the struggle and Jorgen was killed. Six people were left aboard, and the air would still not last to Earth.

Wolff was placed under the Thompsons' watch; he waited for them to fall asleep and left the rocket through the airlock. The crew's first thought was sabotage, until they found his farewell note:

By the time you read this I shall have left the rocket…
When I am gone, I hope you will have enough oxygen to reach earth alive.
There is no point in looking for me; you know very well that I shall have vanished for ever into space.
Forgive me for the harm I have done you.
Frank Wolff's farewell note, 9 June 1952

Wolff was the first Syldavian in space. The Kingdom awarded him its highest honours posthumously, without removing anything from his file.

The Return 9 June

Wolff's sacrifice bought time, not safety. About an hour from Earth, Tintin radioed Sprodj:

The air's becoming unbreathable… The last cylinder from the space-suits has been used up… The others are already unconscious… I wonder if we can possibly get back alive.
Tintin, radio message to Sprodj
Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Oxygen record · Mission XFLR · 3 to 9 June 1952

O₂ reserve model

Compare the crew’s oxygen consumption throughout the mission.

Method, figures and sources

Primary source: Explorers on the Moon, p. 32 (the logbook; the stay cut, 6 days in the English edition, 10 in the French), p. 48 (the Professor’s estimate: 100 hours of repairs, 100 hours of air), p. 50 (72 hours; lift-off from the Moon 9 June 16:52).

O₂(t) = 100% − c · ∫ (n(t) + w(t) · (a − 1) + pipe) dt, with t in days. n(t) is the respiratory load (one per person, 0.2 for Snowy), w(t) the number at work, and a their work factor (1 at rest). pipe = bowls per day × 8/1440, expressed as the equivalent consumption of resting people.

c = 90% ÷ (4.2 × 14 days) ≈ 1.53% of R per person-day at rest: R was sized for 4 people and a dog over 14 days, with a tenth in hand. Snowy counts for about 0.2 of a person (metabolic scaling, mass to the power 0.75, for a dog of about 8 kg). For 6 breathing the same sum gives 9.5 days: the Professor’s “ten days”.

Chronology from the Professor’s logbook and the record: lift-off 3 June 01:34; the tank leaves for Ptolemaeus 6 June 12:35 and the attempt falls during that outing, placed here at 16:52 so that the “seventy-two hours” of repairs end at the 16:52 lift-off of 9 June; the return about 3.6 hours (3 h 34 by sciences.amatheurs.fr; Treiner’s 2024 kinematics give a shorter 192 minutes), landing about 20:28. Jorgen killed about 50 minutes out, Wolff’s step about 1 h 30 out, the last cylinder about 2 h 45 out.

The 100 hours announced at the attempt do not explain an almost empty reserve after 72 hours of repairs at an unchanged consumption rate. This reconstruction uses the recorded chronology and fits the metabolic factor during repairs to leave a small oxygen reserve at arrival: a ≈ 2.11 for the five people at liberty. The two prisoners held below (album p. 48) and Snowy remain at the resting rate. Under these assumptions, six people would run about 9 minutes short; five arrive with about 14 minutes to spare. These are model results, not recorded measurements. The factor averages work, rest and sleep over the repair period. For scale, NASA uses a life-support baseline of 0.84 kg of oxygen per crew member per day.

The Captain’s pipe: a bowl of about 2.5 g of tobacco burns roughly 3 g of oxygen (tobacco’s heat of combustion 14 to 18 kJ/g; Thornton’s rule, 13 kJ per gram of oxygen), the oxygen one person consumes at rest in about 8 minutes. An assumption of this reconstruction; Lehoucq and Mochkovitch (Mais où est donc le temple du Soleil ?, 2003) computed a pipe-smoker’s oxygen and are the source to compare.

Cabin pressure is not calculated. Extending the model to CO₂ would require the cabin’s free volume and the scrubbers’ removal capacity, neither documented in the mission record. The outward-flight dialogue mentions carbon dioxide (album p. 3).

O₂ : NASA · Design and Analysis of a Flexible, Reliable Deep Space Life Support System

CO₂ / CO : NASA · Carbon Dioxide · ATSDR · Carbon Monoxide

What the simulation shows The same reserve lasts less time when more people breathe it, or when they work harder. Shorter repairs save oxygen and bring the return forward. The margins shown depend on the assumptions: the 1952 metabolic factor was fitted to the mission account, not measured.

This model does not calculate CO₂ accumulation or its removal by scrubbers. If removal is inadequate, exhaled CO₂ can make the air dangerous well before the oxygen runs out. The smoking ban also makes sense here: the Captain’s pipe consumes O₂ and produces CO₂, carbon monoxide (CO) and smoke. The pipe control counts only the oxygen consumed; it does not predict the time the crew could survive.

Computation: Raluca Zieverdwoud, Astronautical Section, Sprodj Atomic Research Centre

Tintin lost consciousness in turn. He came round long enough to engage the automatic pilot, and the rocket brought them home on its own. It set down at Sprodj on the evening of 9 June; the rescue team revived them.

Colour photograph at dusk: two red fire engines and a blue-and-cream ambulance, seen from behind, race with their lights on across a dusty plain towards the red-and-white chequered rocket, which is setting down in a cloud of smoke lit by the flame of its motor; lit floodlight towers, vehicles lined up in the distance, snow-capped mountains and a sunset sky
The rescue team races to the rocket, Sprodj, evening of 9 June 1952. Hergé's adaptation shows the scene in broad daylight.

The Eclipsed Triumph 1952

The crew came home; their photographs did not. The 1952 technical report records heavily fogged film, retains two hypotheses, exposure to cosmic radiation and interference from the rocket's electromagnetic installations, and concludes: cause undetermined. Only a few partially fogged negatives could be recovered.

Damaged film frame: a gloved hand fills the foreground above the lunar surface, the exposure heavily fogged
Damaged film frame: the Syldavian rocket standing on the lunar surface, three suited figures and a flag bearing the pelican
Damaged film frame: a helmet visor at the edge of the picture, most of the exposure lost to light fogging
Damaged film frame: the Earth above the lunar horizon, the image soft and chemically blotched
Damaged film frame: Thomson and Thompson in their space suits, hopping across the lunar ground in the low gravity, jagged rock spires to the left, half the image washed out
Damaged film frame: Frank Wolff, seen from behind in his space suit, setting up equipment on the lunar ground, crates and a striped mast beside him

Recovered negatives, Syldavian lunar mission, 3 June 1952

Some twelve partly fogged frames are held today in the archives at Sprodj; the six shown here are among them. They are kept in climate-controlled storage, and the Royal Commission for Historical Authenticity has advised postponing any reconstruction, maintaining that “what cannot be rendered with excellence should not be rendered at all”.

Hergé's version 1950–1954

In Syldavia, the first lunar expedition entered national history at once. Abroad it was known and discussed, but almost nothing of it had been seen: it was Hergé's comic adaptations, Destination Moon (1953) and Explorers on the Moon (1954), that gave the rest of the world its lasting picture of the Syldavian rocket and its voyage. Those two dates also explain the gaps quoted abroad: sixteen years from Destination Moon to Apollo 11, fifteen from Explorers on the Moon. From the flight itself, it is seventeen.

Hergé had been following the programme from the start. His first pages on the preparations appeared in the Journal de Tintin on 30 March 1950, the year of the first test launches. It was long said that he came to Sprodj; nothing in the record supports it. He read widely on space flight, in particular the publications of Alexandre Ananoff.

In the year of the leaks, however, Ananoff's L'Astronautique appeared in Paris; several of its illustrations show arrangements remarkably close to those of the rocket then under construction at Sprodj, the flight deck in particular.

From 1951 the Studios worked from a model. Arthur Vannoeyen built a detailed mock-up of the rocket's interior, from which Bob De Moor drew the sets from every angle, so that the crew's movements held from one panel to the next. In February 1952 Hergé took the model to Paris to show it to Ananoff.

Publication in the Journal de Tintin had stopped on 7 September 1950, as the programme went under secrecy. It resumed only on 9 April 1952, less than two months before lift-off, and ran until 30 December 1953. Wolff's farewell note appeared there in full; for the album, under pressure from Casterman and from Catholic circles, Hergé substituted the hope of a miracle.

In Syldavia the albums never stood in for the facts: the 1952 mission already belonged to national memory. Elsewhere it went otherwise. A comic reads as a story, and for most of its readers the first journey to the Moon remained what Hergé had made of it: a precise narrative, rather than an event whose images they had seen.

Destination Moon Thai edition book cover
Explorers on the Moon Thai edition book cover
Hergé leaning over a table beside a cut-away model of the Moon rocket, with spacesuited figurines and album plates

Hergé’s comic adaptations, in their Thai editions, and the model their interiors were drawn from

The Second Landing 21 July 1969

Seventeen years later, on 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their celebrated steps.

The event, admirably orchestrated by the American agencies, was broadcast live to more than 600 million viewers across all continents, a record for its time. The idea took root everywhere that the United States had been the first to walk on the Moon; Syldavia, true to its scientific discretion, observed in silence.

Drawing by Hergé: on the Moon, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus in orange spacesuits, with Snowy, walk up to an American astronaut stepping off the ladder of his lander. Tintin says "Bienvenue sur la Lune, Mr. Armstrong!", the Captain holds a WELCOME! sign and Calculus a bouquet of roses; the chequered rocket stands behind them, the Earth hangs in the black sky and a question mark rises above the astronaut
Colour photograph of the Apollo 11 astronauts waving from an open car on Broadway amid falling ticker tape, escorted by police motorcycles, crowds and American flags on both sides of the street

Two welcomes, 1969: on the Moon, drawn by Hergé; in New York, down Broadway

Beneath the sound of drums, the truth ploughs in silence
Traditional Syldavian song, Moltus Valley

Recognition 1959–2025

Belgian accounts also preserve a trace of this precedence. Dirk Frimout reached space on 24 March 1992, almost forty years after Tintin, Haddock and Calculus. In its history of Belgium’s participation in the European space adventure, the European Space Agency describes him as the first Belgian to travel into space, with the qualification “after Tintin”.

For decades, certain sceptical minds continued to question the American achievement, convinced that the official account concealed another truth. They were not entirely wrong, but not for the reasons they imagined: the achievement they believed to be imaginary had simply taken place earlier, under the Syldavian flag.

Official recognition from the United States themselves came from another quarter. It took seventy-three years from the landing, and it came not through a diplomatic note or a scientific congress, but in the margins of a comic book.

Explorers on the Moon had reached NASA before Apollo: members of the agency's staff read it soon after its English publication in 1959, the agency told franceinfo. Its wider success came after Armstrong's steps: it rose to the top of Tintin's sales rankings and has stayed in the top three since, with nine million copies sold according to its publisher, Casterman.

The record has grown since. Alongside the fogged negatives held at Sprodj, the clearest pieces have come from the American astronauts themselves: between 2009 and 2015, several of them acknowledged in their own hand that Tintin had walked on the Moon before them. Buzz Aldrin's inscription is the plainest:

First moonwalkers after Tintin
Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 (1969)
Title page of Explorers on the Moon album with handwritten dedication and signature
Handwritten testimonies and signatures from Apollo astronauts in Explorers on the Moon album

The album sold at auction in 2025

That album, a 1962 edition signed by Hergé and six Apollo astronauts, set a world auction record in 2025 at ₭89 million (about €71,000). The Consulate's report on the sale gives all six testimonies in full.

The steps were recognised by hand; the ice by instrument. Professor Calculus's logbook records it in a crevasse near Ptolemaeus in June 1952; the first direct observation of water ice on the lunar surface was published in 2018 by Shuai Li's team, who identified it in the permanently shadowed craters of both poles in data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper aboard India's Chandrayaan-1. The Kingdom notes the sixty-six years, and does not press the point that its own ice lay near the equator.

Two polar maps of the Moon side by side, the south pole on the left and the north pole on the right, the grey surface shaded by temperature and the ice locations marked in cyan, clustered in the shadows of craters near each pole
Water ice at the Moon's poles, mapped in 2018

Memory Every 3 June

Every 3 June, Lunar Triumph Day brings ceremonies at Sprodj, model rocket launches and televised re-enactments of the lift-off, and new commemorative stamps are issued.

At Sprodj itself, each June the Sprodj Wanderers play a ceremonial Lunar Triumph fixture, their supporters rising in a slow, floating “lunar wave”. The Syldavian language still carries scientific vocabulary introduced by the programme, together with French and Dutch forms brought by its Belgian scientists. The scientific tradition continues too: the Royal Meteorological Observatory presents its HVEGHI-1 Earth-observation programme as its heir.

The Royal Cinematheque’s June 2026 retrospective From Sprodj to the Stars brought before the public, for the first time, colour footage from the research facility that had long been classified, alongside a restored print of the 1954 documentary The Men of Sprodj, within a programme devoted to achievements of which no images remain. On Pelflix the series Sprodj: Shadows of the Stratosphere places the engineers of Sprodj, Wolff foremost among them, at the heart of its story.

The tributes that celebrate the rocket have been less faithful to its crew. The LEGO set of 2026 reproduces the rocket piece by piece and five of its travellers as minifigures; the Brussels Airlines livery too carries the rocket and some of its crew. Neither shows Frank Wolff.

Pixel-art video game screen: the control room at Sprodj, a large screen showing the chequered red-and-white rocket in flight, four heart-rate monitors with portraits of Calculus, Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock, and at the console General Baxter standing behind two operators in headsets
Sprodj Shadows of the Stratosphere series poster - Pelflix Original
Underside of a Brussels Airlines aircraft in a misty hangar, its belly painted with the red-and-white chequered lunar rocket
Photograph of a brick-built model of the chequered red-and-white rocket on a wooden table, five small figures in orange spacesuits and a white dog on a base beside it, a bookcase and a globe out of focus behind, a notebook and pen in front
A painted resin figurine of Frank Wolff in pale green overalls with a red badge numbered 14, round glasses and a small moustache, caught mid-stride with his arms held out, in front of its booklet: Figurines Tintin, La Collection Officielle, no. 75, Frank Wolff, l'ingénieur félon, with the same pose drawn on the cover
A strip of five perforated postage stamps, each marked BELGIE - BELGIQUE 0,41: a photograph of Hergé at his desk with a rocket model, a design drawing of the rocket's structure, and three panels from the comic adaptations of the lunar mission, the last with figures in orange suits on the Moon beside the chequered rocket
Photograph inside an aircraft cabin: a woman in a blue flight suit with agency patches, her hair floating, looks up at a red-and-white chequered toy rocket drifting weightless below the ceiling lights, safety netting to the right
A tall red-and-white chequered rocket sculpture standing on a lit circular plinth in an airport concourse, illuminated snowflake decorations hanging from the roof beams, duty-free shops and travellers with luggage around it
Photograph inside the space station's cupola: an astronaut in a dark polo shirt holds an open comic album with both hands, reading; behind him, by the window, a small figure in an orange spacesuit and a red-and-white chequered rocket float in mid-air, with the station's structure and the Earth's limb beyond
Dirk Frimout, in a green V-neck jumper over a light shirt, smiles beside a window, one hand on the largest of several red-and-white chequered models of the Moon rocket lined up on the sill; a framed black-and-white print hangs on the wall behind him
A champagne bottle with a red foil capsule beside its red presentation box: the box reads CHAMPAGNE BROCHET-HERVIEUX, PREMIER CRU, ÉCUEIL; a gold medallion on the neck carries a rocket, and the label sets the red-and-white chequered rocket beside a comic panel in which Captain Haddock opens a bottle, the cork going PAN
A small red-and-white chequered model of the Moon rocket stands on a shelf among dark storage boxes with leather straps, one labelled PHARMACIE MONSIEUR ALAÏA, in front of a brick wall; other boxes are labelled CRAIE, and the gilded frame of a tall mirror stands to the right
Two hands holding an open Belgian passport: the left page carries the Kingdom's name in French, Dutch, German and English above the red-and-white chequered rocket standing on a pale mountain landscape, with the specimen number GA0000000; the right page is the data page, with its photograph, barcode and security printing
A white garage between two slate-roofed houses, reached by a paved driveway: its door is painted with a mural of Tintin and Captain Haddock in orange spacesuits floating among the stars, each holding a loose yellow line, with the Earth in the upper left and the painter's signature at lower right

Tributes to the Lunar Triumph

The rocket remains the image of the Lunar Triumph. Wolff has a memorial of his own: it stands on Heroes' Square in Klow. Every 3 June the Kingdom recalls there the name of the man whose sacrifice made the return possible.

Pale stone statue of Frank Wolff in a long coat, one hand resting on a globe, on a granite plinth inscribed FRANK WOLFF 1906-1952 above a line in Syldavian, flanked by relief panels of the rocket on its pad and of Wolff at a blackboard; wreaths with yellow and black ribbons at its foot, an honour guard and flags at half-mast behind, the heads of the crowd in the foreground
Frank Wolff Memorial, Heroes' Square, Klow, 3 June 2025
Sprodj Atomic Research Centre Astronautical Section

Concordance · Mission log · 03/06/52 – 09/06/52

Mission log, 3–9 June 1952

The sequence as the Section's registers record it, and, for each moment, the page of Hergé's adaptation where the reader can find it. The Section publishes this concordance for readers of the adaptation, which remains the most widely read account of the mission. Times the registers do not give are marked as not recorded; those the Section has reconstructed are marked as reconstructions.

Date and time Event Where to read it
3 June, 01:34 Lift-off from Sprodj; the Thom(p)sons still aboard Adaptation, p. 3
3 June, time not recorded Captain Haddock leaves through the airlock and becomes a satellite of Adonis Adaptation, p. 8
3 June, time not recorded Landing in the crater Hipparchus; Tintin's first steps Adaptation, p. 25; crossing time: reconstruction after sciences.amatheurs.fr
3 June, 23:45 Unloading complete; observatory begun; assembly of the Moon tank started Logbook, reproduced p. 32
4 June, 08:30 Telescope mounted, cameras in position, theodolite in working order; cosmic rays, Record Books I and II Logbook, reproduced p. 32
5 June, 19:20 Moon tank ready for use Logbook, reproduced p. 32
6 June, 12:35 The tank leaves for the caves near Ptolemaeus: Wolff, Haddock, Tintin, Snowy; stalactites, ice Logbook, reproduced p. 32
6 June, time not recorded Jorgen's attempt; the rocket damaged; repairs estimated at 100 hours Adaptation, pp. 41–43; the estimate p. 48; placed at 16:52 in the Section's oxygen register
6 to 9 June Repairs: 72 hours; the tank and the optical instruments stay on the Moon Adaptation, p. 50
9 June, 16:52 Lift-off from the Moon, 7 aboard Logbook, reproduced p. 50
9 June, return flight Jorgen killed in the struggle; Wolff leaves the rocket; the last cylinder; automatic pilot Adaptation, from p. 50; approximate times: the Section's oxygen register
9 June, about 20:28 Landing at Sprodj; the crew revived Adaptation, pp. 58–62; the hour: reconstruction by the Astronautical Section, after sciences.amatheurs.fr
Pages refer to Hergé's adaptation, Explorers on the Moon; the numbering is the same in the French and English editions. Logbook: Professor Calculus's; the adaptation reproduces extracts of it.
Compilation: Astronautical Section, Sprodj Atomic Research Centre