Word: xenon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...camera failed to track the asteroid properly, producing only six tiny and disappointing images shot from 8,700 miles away. But DS1's remote-sensing instruments downloaded streams of data that should reveal much about Braille's composition. Having consumed only 25 lbs. of its original 180 lbs. of xenon fuel, the spacecraft has enough left to intercept and investigate two comets, one burnt out, the other highly active. Appropriately enough, if NASA gives the go-ahead, DS1 would reach those comets in the year...
...then, he was already learning valuable lessons from his mother. By example, she taught him how to find and exploit zones of privacy, how to build an invisible barrier around himself when in public. It was a technique he might apply at the Xenon disco, where he hung out in the late '70s: first, use personal radar to sense the approach of a stranger, then move subtly until your back is turned to the person--a way of saying "Please, leave me alone, please." But if someone breached the barrier anyway, John would then be unfailingly polite, using the Kennedy...
That's an immense if. Drexler's idea was initially dismissed as science fiction, but even skeptics admit that, unlike time travel and warp drives, nothing about it actually violates the laws of physics. And when in 1989 an IBM team famously spelled the Big Blue logo in xenon atoms, nanotech spread from the basements of feverish acolytes poring over Drexler's seminal book, Engines of Creation (1986), to the research labs of NASA and Xerox PARC. Today nanotech researchers speak not of if but of when. Great leaps forward come from thinking outside the box. Drexler may be remembered...
What is most remarkable about the spacecraft is how it gets from place to place. After being launched by an ordinary rocket, DS1 will be pushed through space by an engine that works by firing electrons into atoms of xenon gas, stripping each of an electron and giving the atoms an electric charge--ionizing them. The ions are then accelerated through an electric field and emitted from thrusters at 65,000 m.p.h. Despite that speed, the particles produce little thrust, comparable to the weight of a piece of paper...
That patience pays off. DS1 will carry a mere 180 lbs. of xenon fuel, about one-tenth the fuel needed for a conventional craft. Electricity required to power thrusters and other equipment will come from a new solar panel equipped with 720 lenses that focus sunlight down to a strip of solar cells...