Star Trek: Fission - The Star Trek future depicted from the 1966 television series though to today's motion pictures, is one of energy abundance.

Conceived by Gene Roddenberry during the "Atoms for Peace" era, and the harnessing of nuclear fission with what would later become known as "1st Generation" nuclear reactors, it looked like humanity's future would be one of unconstrained access to energy.

Lessons we've learned since the creation of Star Trek include the following:

- Energy Storage is expensive.
- Nuclear Fusion is hard.
- Fossil fuels are extremely plentiful.
- Nuclear FISSION is easy... it can even happened in nature.

FISSION, the splitting of atoms to release enormous amounts of energy, deserves a second look.

The energy density of Uranium and Thorium, and the abundance of those materials, mean the societal though-experiment pursued in Star Trek... the society of abundance... the preservation of Earth's wild spaces... the lack of pollution... from an energy perspective those "Star Trek" goals can be achieved WITHOUT FUSION.

Uranium is more abundant than previously thought, it can even be harvested from seawater. Thorium is even more abundant, and can be fully fissioned into energy using slowed-down neutrons and molten salt chemistry.

Aside from the fantasy of warp-drive and teleportation, FISSION is the key to unlocking space exploration throughout our solar system.

FUSION should still be pursued. It might become a practical source of energy, it might not. We will never know without continuing to try.

But FISSION is here today. It was here on Earth billions of years ago. And there are no significant challenges keeping us from providing abundant energy to power human civilization, whether here on Earth, on the Moon or even on Mars.

This is a construct of http://ThoriumRemix.com/

Music composed by http://KiloWattsMusic.com/