- Asteroid Thicket (allthetropes.org)
In science fiction movies and TV, asteroids form a vast, hyperkinetic, obstacle-strewn Death Course: Enormous rocks spin like tops and whiz around all over the place, frequently even smashing into each other. Trying to navigate one is like asking a chicken to cross a busy Los Angeles freeway during rush hour: Small nimble spacecraft flown by skillful Ace Pilots (i.e, the protagonists) may be able to slalom through without getting reduced to space dust, but any pursuing enemy fighter ships will get picked off one-by-one by giant, malevolent space boulders. Any capital ship who can’t just blast a path through them with its Wave Motion Gun will have to rely on their Deflector Shields to bounce the rocks off.
- Damascus (Wikipedia)
Damascus (/dəˈmæskəs/ də-MASS-kəs, UK also /dəˈmɑːskəs/ də-MAH-skəs; Arabic: دِمَشق, romanized: Dimaşk, IPA: [diˈmaʃq]) is the capital of Syria, the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth holiest city in Islam. Known colloquially in Syria as aš-Šām (الشَّام) and dubbed, poetically, the “City of Jasmine” (مَدِيْنَةُ الْيَاسْمِينِ Madīnat al-Yāsmīn), Damascus is a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world.