Episode Title:
Destination Moon Part 1.
Episode Description:
Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock travel to join Professor Calculus, who has been commissioned by the Syldavian government to secretly build a spacecraft that will fly to the Moon. Arriving at the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre, they meet the Centre's managing director, Mr. Baxter, and Calculus' assistant, the engineer Frank Wolff. After witnessing Calculus test out a new multiplex helmet for the planned mission, they are informed of both his plan and his new use of an ear trumpet due to his signature hearing ailments. Haddock is against the plan, but due to him mistaking Haddock's pipe for the ear trumpet (an error made in reverse by Haddock and corrected in a respective and consequent fire accident), Calculus instead believes he agreed. An unmanned sub-scale prototype of the rocket — the "X-FLR6" — is launched on a circumlunar mission to photograph the far side of the Moon and test Calculus's nuclear rocket engine. Before the launch, the centre's radar picks up a plane which drops three paratroopers near to the centre. One of the men dies from a malfunctioning parachute; the incident coincides with the arrival of the police detectives Thomson and Thompson, who are initially believed to be the intruders...
