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SpaceX Falcon Water Landing Presaged By Russian Sci-Fi Film
Last Friday, SpaceX successfully landed the rocket that launched the Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station. Below the video; yes, you've seen it, but it's so great, see it again!
(Successful landing of SpaceX Falcon 9 on drone ship)
It turns out that this water landing was presaged very closely by the 1959 Russian science fiction film The Sky Calls (Небо Зовёт). In the complete film shown below, skip to the end - 1:06:30 to see the spacecraft land.
(The Sky Calls [Небо Зовёт])
A Soviet scientific expedition is being prepared as the world's first mission to planet Mars. Their space ship Homeland has been built at a space station, where the expedition awaits the command to start. An American ship Typhoon experiencing mechanical problems arrives at the same space station, secretly having the same plans for the conquest of the Red Planet. Trying to stay ahead of Soviets, they start without proper preparation, and soon are again in distress. The Homeland changes course to save the crew of Typhoon. They succeed, but find that their fuel reserves are now insufficient to get to Mars. So Homeland makes an emergency landing on an asteroid "Icarus" passing near Mars, on which they are stranded. After an attempt to send a fuel supply by unmanned rocket fails, another ship Meteor is sent with a cosmonaut on a possibly suicidal mission, to save the stranded cosmonauts.
(The Sky Calls, Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov, Aleksandr Kozyr)
Update 15-Apr-2017: Here's a new (much earlier!) reference to the idea of a rocket taking off from an artificial island (but not landing) from Between Earth and Moon (1930) by Otfrid von Hanstein.
(Artificial Island)
End update. I found this thanks to an imgur poster ScienceGeek100 at The Sky Calls/SpaceX Falcon 9.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/9/2016)
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