Shortly after the American Civil War has ended, Victor Barbicane—a driven businessman and inventor—comes up with a new source of energy he calls Power X. His plan is to use Power X in rockets; to demonstrate its power, he plans to send a rocket and crew to the moon. He is first among them, as are his assistant Ben Sharpe, his arch-rival Stuyvesant Nicholl and Nicholl’s pretty daughter VIrginia. Nicholl is convinced that Power X is an affront to God, and sabotages the rocket so that it can’t return to Earth. When the rocket finally lands on the moon, they’re not prepared for what they find there, and must wage a battle against time in order to repair the rocket to enable them to return to Earth.