Later on, these meteorites-turned-into-space-ships may be used to explore the dangerous and faraway corners of the Solar System, since the very substance of each massive meteoritic rocket-body will serve as an adequate and handy source of fuel supply.
When men have learned to live on such “homes away from home,” it is quite possible that the larger of these modified meteorites, after their interiors have been opened up for occupancy by the inroads of the fuel-hungry rocket-motors, may be steered into neighborly orbits about old Mother Earth. Here, these “natural” satellites will assume the unexciting but necessary roles of the extra living quarters that by then will be so urgently needed to accommodate the mushrooming population of the world of the future.
People who live in these super-urban outliers of Mother Earth may take the same pride in their natural, if converted, homes as many former city dwellers now take in the old-fashioned sprawling farmhouses they have rebuilt and occupied. Perhaps one of your descendants will live in such a meteorite-orb, and occasionally point the finger of scorn at the more elegant but unpleasantly overcrowded artificial satellites preferred by those migrants from teeming earth who lack the true pioneering instinct. Who knows!
FOR FURTHER READING
If you are especially interested in meteoritics, you already may have read some good books on general astronomy. There are many and most of them are not too advanced for the beginner. Unfortunately, these books devote but little space to meteoritics, the “Johnny-come-lately” of astronomy. Almost all of the writings on meteors and meteorites you will find largely profitable to read are in professional meteoritical publications. A selected list of such publications, containing much or at least a worthwhile amount of material you will now be able to understand, is given below. Your chief difficulty in using this list will be in finding some of the more important items in the holdings of your public library, unless it is a large and well-stocked one. Your librarian, however, may be able to help you get the item from some other library—perhaps from that of a nearby university or college.
METEORIC ASTRONOMY
MEBANE, A. D. “The Canadian Fireball Procession of 1913, February 9,” Meteoritics, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1956), pp. 405-421. Eyewitness accounts of the most famous fireball procession on record.
OLIVIER, C. P. Meteors, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1925. An exhaustive survey of work done by visual meteor-observers.
SCHIAPARELLI, G. V. Shooting Stars, a translation by C. C. Wylie and J. R. Naiden, published in the Proceedings, Iowa Academy of Science, Vol. 50 (1943), pp. 48-153. A pioneer treatise, dated 1867, which is basic to later work in this field.
WHIPPLE, F. L. “Photographic Meteor Studies, I,” Proceedings, American Philosophical Society, Vol. 79, No. 4 (1938), pp. 499-548. Fundamental paper on the subject. Of the six meteors analyzed, five followed elliptical orbits and one, a strongly hyperbolic orbit.