Thorium: The NASA Story
The conveniences and necessities of our daily life cannot be met without the use of energy. But our world is always in crisis when it comes to energy reserves. Aerospace engineer Kirk Sorensen believes he has discovered a cleaner, more efficient and more controversial solution to the fluttering energy sources we currently rely on — an abundant, naturally occurring and energy-dense radioactive element called thorium. . The new feature-length documentary, Thorium: The NASA Story, supports one aspect of Sorensen’s proposed solution, outlining its value in the pursuit of space colonization, and then connecting it to its practical application here on Earth stand up.
Carefully selected from a range of widely circulated video sources and newly produced footage by Gordon McDowell, the film makes daunting scientific concepts easily accessible to laypeople. First, it establishes the role of energy in spaceflight and exploration, commemorating several of NASA’s landmark missions, including Voyager 1, New Horizons and the Mars Rover missions.
The success or failure of these missions can be traced back to their exercise of power. The farther we are from the sun, the less capable our solar and battery-powered energy sources will be. As a result, many of NASA’s grandest ambitions — including the desire to explore beneath the ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa — remain conceptual. According to Sorensen, who has worked at NASA for more than a decade, nuclear power could change all that.
The movie uses the popular book and movie “The Martian” as an example to illustrate its argument. If his mission was powered by nuclear energy, the main character wouldn’t have any problems traversing the surface of Mars and using Earth’s resources for food and sustenance.
The aspirations of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, and all those who support space exploration are thwarted by alien energy constraints. With dust and shadows causing billion-dollar solar-powered real-world space missions to fail, the film convincingly argues that the most practical application of thorium isn’t even in space, but here on Earth. Instead of uranium, which is used in today’s water-cooled nuclear reactors, thorium allows us to power our world more efficiently than ever before. The popular view of nuclear power is that it is a destructive force. Th: The NASA story successfully disproves that reputation.
Directed by: Gordon McDowell
