TEXT ON SCREEN: IN 1958, NUCLEAR PHYSICIST FREEMAN DYSON WAS TASKED WITH A MONUMENTAL ENGINEERING CHALLENGE

TO MAKE INTERPLANETARY SPACE TRAVEL A REALITY…

USING THE POWER OF THE NUCLEAR BOMB

FREEMAN DYSON: I was working for the Orion Project. We were using bombs to propel a spaceship, and it gave us a feeling of tremendous power.

TEXT ON SCREEN: ORION WAS AMONG MANY COLD WAR ATTEMPTS TO FIND SUCH BENEFICIAL USES FOR THE BOMB.

AND IT WAS, BY FAR, THE MOST AMBITIOUS.

FREEMAN DYSON: There’s something very seductive about the power in your hands or in your mind that you can do something on a sort of cosmic scale. It goes very much to people’s heads. It was intoxicating.

TEXT ON SCREEN: THEN DYSON HAD A REALIZATION.

FREEMAN DYSON: I remember very well the day that happened. I was heart and soul for bombs, I was working with bombs every day and imagining great spaceships driven by bombs going all over the universe, and then one day I had a look at a piece of paper where they plotted the number of explosions every year from bomb tests, and the logic was very simple: Every time you exploded a bomb for some experiment, you had two new questions to answer. So the next time you needed two experiments and two bombs, then the next time after that you’d need four bombs to answer the questions. So it would just multiply forever like that.

TEXT ON SCREEN: THE CALCULATION MADE DYSON RE-THINK HIS SUPPORT OF NUCLEAR TESTING…

AND HE TURNED AGAINST THE BOMB.

FREEMAN DYSON: I suddenly saw, well, this doesn’t make any sense. Like St. Paul I was converted in one moment.

TEXT ON SCREEN: RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT WAS ONLY ONE OF THE ISSUES ON DYSON’S MIND.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS TESTING WAS ALSO HELPING TO FUEL THE ARMS RACE.

FREEMAN DYSON: Well, the next thing I did was in fact, to testify in the Senate when they had the hearings for ratifying the test ban treaty, which meant death to Orion and no more explosions in the atmosphere. I switched 180 degrees, and I’m very happy that I did.

TEXT ON SCREEN: BUT, LOOKING BACK, DYSON SAYS THAT 1963 TREATY DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH.

FREEMAN DYSON: There are all kinds of horrible things that can happen. Sort of just by the grace of God they didn’t happen yet. Nuclear war would destroy a large part of civilization, and it takes a long time to recover, if ever. I would say there’s nothing else that even comes close to being that bad.

(END)