Plot synopsis
The greenhouse effect is threatening the earth. Two rival industrialists, Dan Randolph and Martin Humphries believe that the key to earth's survival is to mine the asteroid belt and move earth's heavy industry to space.
Millionaire Dan Randolf is going bankrupt, since his aerospace company, Astro Corp, is out of work due to the "greenhouse cliff" putting Earth at a higher priority than space. Cold-hearted multi-billionaire Martin Humphries shows Randolph a fully laid-out plan to reach the Asteroid Belt and mine it for its abundant metals. Randolph immediately takes up the idea, putting his entire life savings into the plan. Humphries donates much of the funds from his own pocket, planning to use that leverage later, after Randolph has put in all of his own work, to destroy Randolph, take over Astro Corp, and have a monopoly on all metals arriving from the Asteroids Belt.
While Dan Randolph wants to distribute the Asteroids' resources fairly at a very modest price to aid in the restoration of Earth's climate system, Martin Humphries intends to take over the company and use the monopoly to his own financial gain.
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to dwarf planets almost 1000 km in diameter; they are metallic or rocky bodies with no atmosphere.
Winter's Heart is a fantasy novel by American author Robert Jordan, the ninth book of his series Wheel of Time. It was published by Tor Books and released on November 7, 2000. Upon its release, it immediately rose to the #1 position on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list, making it the second Wheel of Time book to reach the #1 position on that list. It remained on the list for the next two months. Winter's Heart consists of a prologue and 35 chapters.
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called asteroids or minor planets. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids.
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This is a bibliography of works by Damon Knight.
The complete bibliography of Gordon R. Dickson.
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The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), or lunar cataclysm, is a hypothesized event thought to have occurred approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years (Ga) ago, at a time corresponding to the Neohadean and Eoarchean eras on Earth. According to the hypothesis, during this interval, a disproportionately large number of asteroids collided with the early terrestrial planets in the inner Solar System, including Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. These came from both post-accretion and planetary instability-driven populations of impactors. Although generally accepted, it remains difficult to prove conclusively.
The Wailing Asteroid is a science-fiction novel written by Murray Leinster and first published in 1960 by Avon Books. It presents the theme of the lone inventor who saves Earth from cosmic danger and introduces Humanity to an unknown civilization. The novel was adapted for film as The Terrornauts in 1967.
