Word: icarus
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...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...
...June 19, 1968 the asteroid Icarus, which is nearly a mile in diameter, will crash into the mid-Atlantic, 2,000 miles east of Florida. Its impact - the equivalent of a 500,000-megaton bomb blast - will splash out some 1,000 cubic miles of sea water and form a crater 15 miles across in the ocean floor. Tidal waves 100 ft. high will sweep across coastal cities on both sides of the ocean, and earthquakes 100 times worse than any ever recorded will be felt all over the world. Clearly, Icarus must be stopped. No expense will be spared...
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...
Assuming that such a disaster was nearly upon them, the M.I.T. students organized themselves into seven specialized groups to study the trajectories necessary to intercept Icarus, the space hardware and communications equipment that was available or could be quickly produced, and the effects of nuclear explosions. They consulted with leading physicists, used M.I.T. computers, and determined whether Cape Kennedy's launch-pad capacity could be expanded in time. The groups then coordinated their findings and, using systems engineering, devised a master plan to meet the threat of Icarus...
...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...