at least it's never suggested you can exist in outer space unprotected. Some sci-fi movies that came later (like "The Black Hole") made the mistake of having non-spacesuited characters breathe or even talk while in the vacuum of space. In the Flash serials space travelers never open up and/or leave a rocketship still in space as they couldn't live outside the controlled environment of the ship.
shareTo be fair, I don't think the fact that you couldn't breath in space was public knowledge in the 1930s. In general, we didn't really know a whole lot about space before we started sending rockets to the moon.
Even some more modern shows get it wrong... the cartoon Thundercats has a lot of people walking in space, and even gravity in space, and that was made in 1985.
One other thing the original author needs to keep in mind is the film's target audience---CONSIDERABLY younger than we are now! I remember wanting to get home from school every afternoon so I could watch it on re-runs in the afternoons in the late 60's and early 70's! It was appealing to me, then, but I can only imagine how cheesy it would be to sit down and actually watch it (although I am a big Buster Crabbe fan).
Moviedude1
Never hate your enemies...it clouds your judgement!
At the very end of "Flash Gordon Space Soldiers" Flash opens the door to Zarkov's space ship to toss out the time bomb that was hiddened inside. He even made it look like it was an effort to push the door open because of the pressure of the air passing by.
But I love these serials. I may laugh at the poor special effects, but I also realise the low budget they had to work with and that the 1930's science of special effects was limited. I give these people credit for the wonderful work they did producing these serials. I wish they had made more.
Waffles Anyone
rstory-3
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
All the Flash Gordon serials (and, of course, the Buck Rogers one from '39)are great; my favorites being in the order they were released. Seventy years later, you can sit down and watch them all and enjoy them for what they are:great sci-fi action adventure flicks....and at a couple of hours running time apiece, really great. I also wish they had made more, there and then.
shareI just looked back on the scene mentioned in the third reply. Notice the tossed-out time bomb exploding in what clearly looks like air. Either that's a mistake or the rocketship is not in outer space (still in Mongo's sky) during the moment Flash opens its door to dispose of the bomb.
shareWell, they did hav the entire panet Mongo heading for Earth through millions of miles of space, no explanation of why thought that smashing into Earth wouldn't wipe Mongo out too, no explanation of how they got around keeping the planet warm without sunligt, keeping in the atmosphere. But hey, this is cheesy, corny 1930's adventure! It doesn't have to make sense! It's so outdated it's fun and hilarious and a great way to kill a couple of hours! I still love this stuff, even as primative and simplistic as it is now.
shareMing said that he never intended for Mongo to collide with Earth, but would instead destroy it in his own way. Then Zarkov suggested taking over the Earth instead.
shareIn the third serial a radio announcer voiceover said, "Flash's rocketship has left Saturn and is traveling back to Earth at the incredible speed of 1200 miles an hour!" At that speed Flash would be all but forgotten by the time he arrived.
The distances between the planets was known even back then and with simple arithmetic the writers could have caught this flaw easily. But then you're also dealing with the audiences of the time. There was no need to fact check interplanetary physics.
First, the picky part: Flash never went to Saturn in any of the three serials. (Buck Rogers did, though.) In the first one he went to Mongo, the second Mars, and the third Mongo again. Also, it was at the beginning of the second serial, returning from Mongo, where the announcer made the "1200 miles per hour" statement. Actually, he said, "at least 1200 miles per hour."
It is too late to ask the writers about this but you are probably correct in that they figured their audience at the time would not catch on to the fact (or, possibly, care) that, at that speed, it would take over 20 hours just to circle the Earth (near the surface)! As to flying to Mars, they did it in what seemed to be about a half hour or so. Again, either they didn't realize that at the speed they gave Zarkov's rocket ship, that trip would have taken the better part of three years (each way.)
By the way, at least with me, the writers were correct. I have been watching Flash (and Buck) since being a kid in the early 1950s. Still love it!
I stand corrected.
shareThese serials were produced for an audience that was somewhere between the first and fifth grade. Launching a trip to the "Mongo" by casually picking up Dale and Flash shortly after they parachuted out of an airplane without a scintilla of preparation mattered not one atom. The minds of the audience adjusted to accept all sorts of absurdities because they had no idea of the reality but knew a bigger pay-off was coming. "If ya' gotta fight an OctaSac, don't matter how 'ya got there." These things are mindless fun, a distraction and a way to be a kid again. BUT, no matter your age, Ms. Rogers is gorgeous and sexy Dale!
shareYeah!!!!!
When you're in outer space, the flames from your sparler engine don't sputter down, and the smoke does not go up.
Also, in real space, you can NOT see the strings.
It's like they didn't CARE about science FACT.
I hope you're joking with this post.
----------------- Church ||||||||||||| State .
Did 1930's scientists/sci-fi writers know about the lack of gravity in outer space?
Because in the FLASH films, noone is ever weightless when they're rocketing through space. It seems to be like an airplane flight. And no matter what plane they're on, there is enough oxygen to breathe without benefit of spacesuits!
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?
The air in the ship situation is covered in episode 1 just after taking off. Dale acts as a canary and faints reminding them to turn on the air tank.
shareYes scientists and some serious science fiction writers knew the distances to the planets, the lack of air in outer space, weightlessness, etc.
Ancient Greek philosophers calculated the size of Earth, the distance to the Moon, and the size of the Moon fairly accurately. They knew the Sun was farther than the Moon, since the Moon passes in front of the Sun during solar eclipses.
Copernicus calculated the relative distances of the various planets from the Sun almost 500 years ago. And for centuries astronomers have sought to calculate the real distances with greater and greater accuracy. By the 1960s they knew the distances to Mars and Venus well enough for space probes sent to those planets to arrive as calculated.
Kepler's Somnium (1608) is both a novel about a trip to the moon and a description of the relation between the Moon and the Earth.
When Newton published his laws of gravity and motion in 1687, scientists soon realized that if there was air in outer space friction between the space air and the planets would cause terrific winds on all the planets and the planets would be slowed down and would spiral into the Sun. Scientists found that the air was thinner at higher altitudes on mountains and could estimate how thin it would be at various altitudes long before balloons, planes, and rockets reached those altitudes.
Early pioneers of space flight theory used Newton's laws to calculate rocket trajectories and weightlessness in orbiting or coasting rockets.
Many early science fiction stories were accurate about space flight. Others were not. In any case, the kids who watched flash Gordon series could have found accurate books about spce flight in many though not all libraries.
The silent film Woman in the Moon (1929) was many times more accurate in space flight that Flash Gordon serials.
https://moviechat.org/tt0019901/Woman-in-the-Moon
Destination Moon (1950) was the second reasonably accurate space travel film, and the creators had scenes where they showed and told the audience about the airlessness of space, weightlessness while coasting, etc., etc., because they believed that a large proportion of the audience wouldn't know that.
https://moviechat.org/tt0042393/Des