Atomic Dream
Year | 2013 |
Director(s) | Derek Lartaud, Melanie Ruiz |
Runtime | 26 minutes |
Producer(s) | Derek Lartaud, Melanie Ruiz |
In 1958, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson became a lead scientist on a team that ventured to launch a 5,000-ton spaceship to Mars almost a decade before man had walked on the moon. Dyson believed that he himself would be space bound, heading through the Milky Way, by 1970. We learn about Dyson through a period in his life that he calls his happiest — working on Project Orion to design a nuclear bomb-propelled, interplanetary spaceship. In 1961, as his worries about nuclear fallout grew, Dyson had to decide if he would support the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, effectively signing a death sentence for Project Orion and ending his dreams of traveling the solar system.