Word: asteroid
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Asteroid Closeup. The Martian moon-naping mission, which is Singer's most startling concept, stems from his longtime fascination with Phobos and Deimos, the two tiny, natural satellites of Mars. If the moonlets turn out to have been passing asteroids captured by Martian gravity, Singer argues, they would present a unique opportunity for man to have a first closeup look at asteroids. Even more important, he says, they may have been created at the same time as Mars-but because of their small size they probably did not experience the violent chemical and physical changes that occur during...
...appropriately uptight put-on. As a few hundred hippies gathered in the Boulder, Colo., area-a flower-power resort at this time of the year -the story went out that they had recognized Boulder and Tibet as the only havens from destruction when, as they expected, the asteroid Icarus smashed into the earth. The ultimate happening was supposed to have taken place at 4:48 p.m., E.D.T., June 14. Instead, at the perigee of its 19-year cycle, Icarus missed by roughly 4,000,000 miles, and the hippies stayed around to enjoy the Sugarloaf Mountain...
After 15 weeks of frantic planning, Sandorff's 21 senior and graduate engineering students worked out a complex scheme that they-and their instructor -believe would save the world from collision with an onrushing asteroid...
Collision Course. Icarus itself is quite real. Unlike most asteroids, which circle the sun in planetlike orbits between Mars and Jupiter, Icarus has a highly elliptical orbit. Like its mythological namesake, it swoops closer to the sun (only 17 million miles away) than any other planetary body of the solar system, and recedes as far away as 183 million miles, beyond the orbit of Mars. In its journey, it moves close to the earth's orbital path every 13 months and narrowly-by astronomical standards-misses the earth once every 19 years. Astronomers have charted its current orbit precisely...
...Away. To save the earth, they decided, it would be necessary to launch a salvo of hydrogen bombs into the asteroid's path. To loft the warheads, the U.S. could rush to completion five Saturn 5 Apollo rockets now under construction and build four more from scratch. A second Saturn launch pad now under construction at Cape Kennedy should be completed, and a third could be built. The Atomic Energy Commission would be requested to assemble six 100-megaton H-bomb warheads, the minimum size necessary to attack Icarus effectively...