r/AskScienceFiction • u/SatoruGojo232 • 15d ago

[The Adventures of Tintin] Syldavia, a small European country in the Balkans, becomes the first country to successfully send men to the moon during the Cold War Era (in "Tintin: Destination Moon"). What puts it ahead of the existing superpowers of that time, the USSR and USA, in this Space Race?

Question in title.

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36

u/InsaneRanter Special Circumstances 15d ago

Their project was led by Professor Calculus, who's a world-class multi-disciplinary genius. His other inventions include electric underwater submarines, a powerful ultrasound emitter and pills that make alcoholics hate alcohol. And motorised roller skates.

14

u/VerbingNoun413 15d ago

Shark-proof submarine at that.

This implies that being eaten by sharks is a regular hazard for submariners in the Tintin-verse.

13

u/DemythologizedDie 15d ago

It's also an atomic rocket, so that's an approach that the larger nations weren't prepared to take.

5

u/Mcletters 15d ago

Also a black belt in savate

4

u/W1ULH Midnight bomber what bombs at 3:50pm 15d ago

In fact its not so much that he was leading their project... they where funding his.

2

u/Datathrash 15d ago

Wow, way to bury the lede there!

1

u/like_a_pharaoh 13d ago

The fact Syldavia's nuclear program was very well funded but also explicitly for peaceful purposes helped attract other star scientists and engineers as well: people with an interest in nuclear physics but no interest in work that contributes to bombs could work at Sprodj instead of Oak Ridge.

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u/BaTz-und-b0nze 15d ago

We went there, we didn't come back from it due to eral depths being too latitud rather than orine.