


Both scenes are shown as stills on the movie's cover. Following that is an equally brief panorama of a lunar landscape with the capsule or lander (it's unclear whether this was a direct ascent Moon landing) resting on the surface, apparently taken by Kharlamov during lunar EVA. First there is a brief clip showing Kharlamov piloting the vehicle, presumably on final approach to the Moon.
1ST MAN ON THE MOON MOVIE MOVIE
The very end of the movie shows the only footage of the mission itself after launch, explaining it as a film which was found at the landing site in Chile and is currently in the possession of the Antofagasta Natural museum. After undergoing psychiatric treatment in a sanitorium in Chita, he disappears. Kharlamov is later found on the Mongolian steppes following the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, having suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. His wife apparently covered for him when interrogated as to his whereabouts. It seems that the capsule returned to Earth and landed in Chile, and that Kharlamov journeyed to the Russian Far East by way of Polynesia and China, yet feared capture on his return. A number of men are shown as suspected of being Kharlamov-the NKVD seems to be conducting a criminal investigation of the program and it is implied that those involved, including Kharlamov himself, are in hiding. It is implied that Kharlamov returned to Earth, but with no fanfare and apparently no assistance from the space program. Most of the remainder of the film seems to follow the search for information about what happened next, as the 1930s space program appears to have dissolved immediately after, with no reason given (but presumably as a part of Stalin's purges). He is helped into a space suit and loaded into the capsule, and the rocket lifts off for the Moon-but contact with it is soon lost. The one who shines above the others (similar to the clear front-runners in the early historical Soviet space program) is Captain Ivan Sergeyevich Kharlamov (possibly a reference to the real-life cosmonaut Valentin Varlamov). The movie follows the selection and training of a small group of cosmonauts. The evidence is convincing it is clear that in this case, Soviet crewed lunar program cosmonauts were first. A group of journalists are investigating a highly secret document when they uncover a sensational story: that before the Second World War, in 1938, the first rocket was made in the USSR and Soviet scientists were planning to send an orbiter to the Moon and back.
