earthbound B movies that shied away from the sorts of expensive special visual effects and matte paintings that would ordinarily inspire awe or wonder in casual audiences. Kubrick’s goal was to create a space tale that was thought-provoking and that included numerous images that were truly awesome (in the proper sense of the word); thus, it was his intention “to pull out all the stops”. According to genre film authority James Roman in his Bigger than Blockbusters: Movies that Defined America: “Articulating his vision about the infiniteness of space, Kubrick use[d] America’s Apollo space program as a means to embark from. [The program’s] goal was to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to earth. . . . [W]hile the American space program [clearly] influenced Kubrick's work, it did not provide him with the material he needed to visualize space travel and with the technology of the future. A 1955 film, George Pal’s Conquest of Space provided Kubrick with a sense of direction in his . . . pursuit of this imagery. [For example,] in Pal’s film there is [the center-piece] rotating wheel or earth station that Kubrick adapts to 2001, and he creates a poetic image of it floating and rotating in space . . . .” The goal of this exercise of viewing dozens of earlier science-fiction movies had little to do with plot elements; Kubrick simply ignored Conquest of Space'''s highly-criticized story line and character development and instead focused on the film's remarkable design. He sought high-quality, well-crafted images that would stimulate himself and his creative staff to reach higher to find the look and design of his own film. Furthermore, the genre film authority Roy Kinnard also suggests strongly in his 1979 Fantastic Films article, “Conquest of Space: A New Look at an Old Classic”, that the visually arousing design of Kubrick’s 2001 was influenced by Conquest of Space. He says, “...the most interesting aspect of Conquest [is] its startling parallels with Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1968 production. It is a well-known fact that before he began work on 2001, Kubrick watched virtually every science fiction film ever made, and it is not unreasonable to assume that he not only saw Conquest, but also found quite a bit of inspiration in it.” Then Kinnard points out a number of similarities between the two films (illustrated with photo stills from the movies)—some obvious and others not