Also known as
Pittance
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has officially named an asteroid after the recently-deceased Scottish author Iain Banks, a 6.1 km (3.8 mile) "stony" rock in the main asteroid belt orbiting the Sun. Dr Jose Luis Galache of the Minor Planets Centre (MPC) heard about Bank's diagnosis of cancer and, as a reader of his …
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As the person who submitted the name request to the IAU, I'd like to clarify that one of the rules of asteroid nomenclature is that the name be a single word, pronounceable in its original language. As such, Iainmbanks did not qualify. It was my first choice but I was quickly informed it wouldn't fly, so Iainbanks it had to be. The other option was Iainmenziesbanks, which just seemed too wordy.
There's another rule that says you can't name more than one asteroid after any given person, so I'm afraid one asteroid is all Iain is getting.
Cheers,
—JL Galache
Minor Planet Center
Beats the hell out of a wee blue plaque.
Seems the asteroid is probably big enough too. I'm not sure you could hide a GCU in there. Maybe some ROUs.
I propose the next steps are:
2. send robot spacecraft
3. hollow out a nice big cylinder
4. get it spinning to simulate gravity
5. err did I miss out the bit about inventing a way of sourcing free energy from the vacuum?