Moonfall (novel)
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Moonfall (novel)
''Moonfall'' is a 1998 hard science fiction novel by American writer Jack McDevitt. The book depicts the impact of an interstellar comet on the Moon and how the catastrophic effects are handled. The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1998. Plot summary In 2024, Charlie Haskell, the vice president of the United States, is on the Moon to inaugurate the first moonbase. An interstellar comet is discovered to be on course to impact the Moon and shatter it. A rescue mission gets underway to take the thousand-something population of the base off the Moon, with the support of the L1 space station (near the Earth-Moon L1 point) and Skyport, a larger geocentric space station. Haskell, in a moment of zealousness to show responsibility, promises the public to get off the Moon only after everyone else has. Subsequent analysis reveals that the existing rescue plan would result in about 10 people not being able to get off the Moon before the impact. The VP chooses to ...
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Jack McDevitt
Jack McDevitt (born April 14, 1935) is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. Most of his books follow either superluminal pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins or galactic relic hunters Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. McDevitt has received numerous nominations for Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell awards. '' Seeker'' won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel. McDevitt's first published story was "The Emerson Effect" in ''The Twilight Zone Magazine'' in 1981. Biography McDevitt went to La Salle University, where a short story of his won the annual ''Freshman Short Story Contest'' and was published in the school's literary magazine, ''Four Quarters''. As McDevitt explained in an interview: McDevitt received a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971. He returned to writing when his wife, Maureen, encouraged him to try his hand at it in 1980. , McDe ...
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Deep Impact (film)
''Deep Impact'' is a 1998 American science-fiction disaster film directed by Mimi Leder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, and starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer of this film. It was released by Paramount Pictures in North America and by DreamWorks Pictures internationally on May 8, 1998. The film depicts the attempts to prepare for and destroy a wide comet set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction. ''Deep Impact'' was released in the same summer as a similarly themed film, ''Armageddon'', which fared better at the box office, while astronomers described ''Deep Impact'' as being more scientifically accurate. Both films were similarly received by critics, with ''Armageddon'' scoring 37% and ''Deep Impact'' scoring 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. ''Deep Impact'' grossed over $349 million worldwide on an $80 million production budget. It was the f ...
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Novels Set On The Moon
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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Space Exploration Novels
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the ''Timaeus'' of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections on what the Greeks called ''khôra'' (i.e. "space"), or in the ''Physics'' of Aristotle (Book IV, Delta) in the definition of ''topos'' (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of place" as "space ...
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Novels About Impact Events
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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Boost-glide
Non-ballistic atmospheric entry is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. It includes trajectories such as skip and glide. Skip is a flight trajectory where the spacecraft goes in and out the atmosphere. Glide is a flight trajectory where the spacecraft stays in the atmosphere for a sustained flight period of time. In most examples, a skip reentry roughly doubles the range of suborbital spaceplanes and reentry vehicles over the purely ballistic trajectory. In others, a series of ''skips'' allows the range to be further extended. Non-ballistic atmospheric entry was first seriously studied as a way to extend the range of ballistic missiles, but was not used operationally in this form as conventional missiles with extended range were introduced. The underlying aerodynamic concepts have been used to produce maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARV), to increase the accuracy of some mi ...
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ʻOumuamua
Oumuamua is the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System. Naming of comets#Current system, Formally designated 1I/2017 U1, it was discovered by Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakalā Observatory, Hawaii, on 19 October 2017, approximately 40 days after it passed its Apsis#Perihelion and aphelion, closest point to the Sun on 9 September. When it was first observed, it was about from Earth (about 85 times as far away as the Moon), and already heading away from the Sun. Oumuamua is a small object estimated to be between long, with its width and thickness both estimated to range between . It has a red color, similar to objects in the outer Solar System. Despite its close approach to the Sun, Oumuamua showed no signs of having a Coma (cometary), coma. It has exhibited Gravitational acceleration, nongravitational acceleration, potentially due to outgassing or a push from solar radiation pressure. Nonetheless, the object could be ...
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When Worlds Collide (1951 Film)
''When Worlds Collide'' is a 1951 American science fiction disaster film released by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by George Pal, directed by Rudolph Maté, and stars Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hansen, and John Hoyt. The film is based on the 1933 science fiction novel of the same name, co-written by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie. The film's storyline concerns the coming destruction of the Earth by a rogue star called Bellus and the desperate efforts to build a space ark to transport a group of men and women to Bellus' single planet, Zyra. Plot In the prologue, quotes from the Book of Genesis are shown and narrated, describing God's decision to wipe out humanity. Pilot David Randall flies top-secret photographs from South African astronomer Dr. Emery Bronson to Dr. Cole Hendron in the United States. Hendron, with the assistance of his daughter Joyce, confirms their worst fears: Bronson has discovered that a rogue star named Bellus, accompanied by an Earth-siz ...
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Armageddon (1998 Film)
''Armageddon'' is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis with Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, Keith David and Steve Buscemi. The film was a commercial success, grossing $553 million worldwide against a $140 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998. However, the film received mostly mixed reviews from critics. Plot A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis, before entering the atmosphere and bombarding New York City. NASA discovers the meteors were pushed out of the asteroid belt by a rogue comet which also jarred loose a Texas-sized asteroid that will impact Earth in 18 days, causing an extinction level event that will wi ...
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Meteor (film)
''Meteor'' is a 1979 science fiction disaster film directed by Ronald Neame, and starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. The film's premise, which follows a group of scientists struggling with Cold War politics after an asteroid is detected to be on a collision course with Earth, was inspired by a 1967 MIT report '' Project Icarus''.Kleiman Louis A.''Project Icarus: an MIT Student Project in Systems Engineering'' (M.I.T. Report No. 13), Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1968; reissued 1979 The screenplay was written by Oscar winner Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann. The international cast also includes Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda. The film was a box office flop and received negative reviews, but it was nonetheless nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound. Plot After the asteroid Orpheus in the Asteroid Belt is hit by a comet, dozens of asteroid fragments are sent on a collision course towards E ...
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Impact (miniseries)
''Impact'' is a 2009 Canadian action disaster miniseries directed by Mike Rohl, written by Michael Vickerman and distributed by Tandem Communications, starring David James Elliott, Natasha Henstridge, Benjamin Sadler, Steven Culp, James Cromwell and Florentine Lahme as the story shows about a meteor shower which eventually sends the Moon on a collision course with Earth. The two-part (Episodes were called Nights) mini-series premiered February 14 and 15, 2009 on the Canadian premium television channel Super Channel and was also shown on ABC on June 21 and 28, 2009 and on Alpha TV in September 2011. Plot During a meteor shower said to be the most spectacular in 10,000 years, an asteroid hidden by the meteor field strikes the Moon. Fragments of the asteroid and of the Moon itself penetrate Earth's atmosphere and make impact. The initial damage is minimal, though significant physical damage to the lunar surface can be seen from Earth. Experts believe that the Moon has stabili ...
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Seveneves
''Seveneves'' is a hard science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson published in 2015. The story tells of the desperate efforts to preserve ''Homo sapiens'' in the wake of apocalyptic events on Earth after the unexplained disintegration of the Moon and the remaking of human society as a space-based civilization after a severe genetic bottleneck. Plot Part One In the near future, an unknown agent causes the Moon to shatter. As the pieces begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that Moon fragments will begin entering Earth's atmosphere, forming a white sky and blanketing the Earth within two years with what he calls a "Hard Rain" of bolides, causing the atmosphere to heat to incandescence and the oceans to boil away, rendering Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years. The world's leaders evacuate as many people and resources as possible to a swarm of "arklet" habitats called a "Cloud Ark" in orbit with the Internationa ...
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