Taglines: An epic mission becomes a deadly crisis.
The world watches in awe as the Roebling Clipper is launched into space. Using state-of-the-art scalar engines to fly around the Moon and back in just hours, the maiden voyage of the first-ever trans-lunar passenger ship is about to make history. Among those on board: First Lady Simone Mathany, space-exploration entrepreneur Steve Roebling, Dr. Denise Balaban, pilot Fiona Henslaw, and a very lucky lottery winner. But while en route, a massive solar flare sparks a cosmic-ray burst that accelerates Aurora’s engine and blows the ship away from Earth’s orbit.
Now out of control, it’s hurtling straight for the sun. At Mission Control, along with the desperate President Thomas Mathany, an increasingly anxious team of experts puts a plan into motion – an interception by a shuttle attached to the International Space Station. When that ends in disaster, the Aurora only picks up speed. Now being pulled toward the sun at three percent of the speed of light, it’s only a matter of hours before it burns. With that, the scalar engine will trigger cosmic ray bursts, and a giant electromagnetic pulse storm that will blow Earth back into the Stone Age. Now, preparing for the inevitable seems the last – and only – terrifying option.
About the Story (2013)
A privately owned spaceship with passengers, among them the president’s wife, is on its maiden flight around the Moon and back to Earth. When a massive solar storm blows the rocket off course, the ship moves forward out of control on a direct path toward the Sun, and eventually burns up. The Quantum scalar drive powering the ship, which is engineered to withstand extreme temperatures, survives solar impact and puts the Sun into a hyperactive phase, causing massive bursts of radiation that have a devastating effect on Earth. The second half of the movie depicts these effects and peoples’ struggles to find shelter and survive.
It is revealed that the US military has copied and militarized the Quantum scalar drive, and built a spaceship powered by Nuclear Pulse Propulsion to propel the weapon into orbit. The creator of the scalar drive teams up with a NASA astronaut to reconfigure the weapon so as to counteract the effects of the first one as it drops into the Sun. The Sun cools down and the Earth is saved from destruction.
The film contains a number of scientific inaccuracies. The quantum scalar drive and the nuclear pulse propulsion system are, while not presently in existence, reasonable devices used in a science-fiction setting. But having the spacecraft make an external whooshing sound as it passes in airless space is not. The ship, while out of control and not under power, makes a slingshot orbit of the moon.
In the absence of thrust the passengers of the craft would be weightless; they are shown as feeling a nine-gravity force during this orbit, when in reality they would share the orbit of the ship and feel no gravitational effects at all. Furthermore, while light-speed is mentioned within the dialogue of the film, the delay in radio contact between the Earth and lunar orbit, some two and a half seconds, does not occur, conversation between the two being continuous.
The lag which would occur between Earth and a ship nearing the Sun, which would approach sixteen minutes, is also not featured. Whether the radiation from the sun, both of heat and short wave radiation, and which increases with approach in an inverse square ratio, would be tolerated by the ship is not explained.
Exploding Sun (2013)
Directed by: Michael Robison
Starring: David James Elliott, Anthony Lemke, Natalie Brown, Alex Weiner, Mylene Robic
Production Design by: Sylvain Gingras
Cinematography by: Michel St. Martin
Film Editing by: Jean Beaudoin
Music by: James Gelfand
Art Direction by: Camille Parent
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment and Sonar Entertainment
Release Date: October 15, 2013
Visits: 126
