Race to Space

As part of the American space program, a chimp named Ham went up in a Redstone rocket and came back in one piece back in 1961. RACE TO SPACE fictionalizes that story to offer a behind-the-scenes peek at America's first successful launch and recovery of a living being into space. Billy (Alex D. Linz) is around 8 and the son of famed German rocket scientist Wilhelm Von Huber (James Woods). Like other scientists who worked for the German war effort during World War II, Von Huber has come to the United States to work on space projects for the government on behalf of his newly adopted country. In the effort to put a man on the moon, the next goal is to send up a working rocket with a trained chimp inside and bring the chimp back alive. Billy, being bullied at school and getting little or no attention from his work-obsessed, harsh father, wanders into the lab where chimps are being trained by Air Force scientist Donni McGuinness (Annabeth Gish). She sees Billy's gift with animals and enlists him to help, which Wilhelm indignantly nixes immediately. Hoping to take over the rocket-building contract from NASA, evil aerospace corporation head Thornhill (William Devane) pays a NASA supervisor to sabotage the mission, with the intent of blowing up the rocket and chimp. Billy and his dad save the day, with the help of a fictionalized astronaut Alan Shepard (Mark Moses) and other German scientists.