Critical to the program's success is timing the Extractor's launch. Piggy-backed to Pluto during construction, the Extractor exploits the planet's orbital momentum for launch. The window is precise and short-lived along Pluto's outbound orbit; there will be only one launch opportunity for the Extractor. Disengaged from Pluto, the Extractor fleet will accelerate along its course to optimum velocity through integrated thrust of multiple thermonuclear burst-propulsion systems or other, more advanced propulsion systems, that are or become available for the Task. ## The Interplanetary Era's second millennium was tumultuous. The harsh austerity imposed by the increased deficits in metals, minerals and other industrial materials and their substitutes created one set of problems; human cloning augmented with genetic engineering and their societal and cultural effects, especially beyond the Asteroids, created others. Human survival in scores of widely scattered and unaffiliated space colonies, loosely called "tank towns," encouraged scientific and social experiments that altered traditional cultures as well as human physiological and psychological characteristics. Cumulative genetic and accelerated evolutionary alterations to the human body along with the effects of unique, often hostile, environments plus sheer distance from the familiar transformed humans-in-space into something else. The unifying forces that had survived the Great Migration withered. In time, the once shared interests of peoples, and allegiances to a home planet, sundered. Varied and increased rates of change opened doors to pretenders among a colony's populace. Opportunists promoted a multitude of causes, usually self-serving. Anticipating advantages to themselves, they combined forces and became influential advocates for disengagement from political, cultural and judicial dominance by the totally foreign open sky government of Earth, billions of kilometers distant. Disengagement, the opportunists agitated, was long overdue; Earth inhabitants would never really understand what life in deep space was about. The crisis came in the middle centuries. Bureaucrats representing the central government on Earth were isolated from the affairs of the colonies they administered. The indigenous populace ignored their authority, their credentials were challenged, and they were invited to return to their home planet -- with no options. The central government on Earth, weakened by shortages and distracted by agitators at home and in space, was neither vigilant nor prepared.