 Set just after the American civil war, businessman and inventor Victor Barbicane (Joseph Cotton) invents a new source of power called Power X. He plans to use it to power rockets, and to show it s potential he plans to send a rocket to the moon. Joining him for the trip are his assistant Ben Sharpe (Don Dubbins), Barbicane s arch-rival Stuyvesant Nicholl (George Sanders), and Nicholl s daughter Virginia (Debra Pagent). Nicholl believes that Power X goes against the will of god and sabotages the space rocket so that they cannot return to earth, setting up a suspensful finale as they battle to repair the rocket