Asteroids and The Outer Solar System
The section of this book discussing asteroids tells the story of past impacts on Earth, and how to prevent future disasters. Zubrin mentions a mission he designed that could be used to deflect an asteroid.
Then he goes on to discuss the nuclear fusion fuel based economy for the outer solar system, as well as possibilities of settling Saturn and Jupiter's moons, especially Titan. He also considers the Kuiper Belt Objects and the Oort Cloud (the trans-Neptunian objects)
See also: Colonization of the outer Solar SystemRead more about this topic: Entering Space: Creating A Spacefaring Civilization
Famous quotes containing the words solar system, outer, solar and/or system:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)