Word: asteroidal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...again, sucking liquidity out of the international financial system? Many experts would dismiss the idea as mere doom mongering. A full-scale war, they say, is one of those "10-sigma" (10 standard deviation) events that are so rare they lie outside the domain of risk management. Like an asteroid hitting the earth or a global influenza pandemic, a really big war belongs in the realm of uncertainty. You just can't price...
...time. The cold war stories could pin the disaster on a simple East-West showdown. The new apocalypses are more shadowy, less ideological. In Jericho, we do not know who attacked or why. In The Road, the cataclysm may have been war, or it may have been an asteroid strike. Who would do this? you might ask these works. Terrorists? A superpower? Americans? God? Their unspoken shrug: Any. All. None. Pick a number...
...Once the commercial guys like Branson or UP Aerospace perfect a reliable, low-cost spacecraft, the space frontier becomes officially open for business to pursue what until recently seemed impossible: Snag an asteroid into low-earth orbit to mine its minerals. Launch solar satellites to beam down all the cheap power we can use. Build space hotels for family tourism. "Whether it means flying a rocket to an inflatable hotel in low-earth orbit, these are far-fetched, fantasy things that are out there but suddenly become a little more real when you have private entrepreneurs trying to figure...
...MIGHT NOT WIN: An asteroid might destroy Planet Earth...
...mission involves other innovations. The Hayabusa ("falcon") spacecraft is powered not by a conventional liquid chemical rocket but by an ionized-xenon-gas engine, a propulsion system that is 10 times more efficient. Just as novel is a half-kilogram rover that Hayabusa will dispatch to roam the asteroid for several days. The robot, named Minerva, will use its miniature cameras and thermometers to send data back to the mothership. Since wheels are useless on such low-gravity surfaces, the coffee-can-sized machine will maneuver using an internal pendulum?a swinging weight that will let the bot hop about...