太空新竞赛 A New Space Race

http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/06/15 14:38  视听英语Ladder AI杂志

Space tourism is getting a boost from a group of fanatical inventors and businessmen

狂热的发明者和生意人推动太空旅游

Thirty years ago, Brian Feeny watched a rocket launch on television. “T hat’s cool,” the 14-year-old Canadian said to his mother. “I want to do that.”

30年前，布莱恩·芬尼从电视上看着火箭升空。“真是酷。”这位14岁的加拿大人对他的母亲说，“我想做这件事。”

Feeny was hardly alone in his aspirations to become an astronaut but, unlike the millions of kids who dream of walking in space, Feeny is actually doing something about it. In a small Toronto warehouse, Feeny and a team of volunteers are slowly building a rocket, called Wild Fire, which they hope to launch into space, carrying three astronauts, by the end of the year.

芬尼并非惟一渴望成为航天员的人，但是和其他数百万梦想在太空漫步的孩子不同，芬尼真的正在为此努力。在多伦多的一个小仓库里，芬尼和一群志愿者正悄悄建造一枚名为“野火”的火箭，他们希望它能在年底运送三位航天员飞上太空。

But Feeny has competition. Around the world, 27 teams are also working on their own home-made space craft, trying to be the first to claim the X Prize: a $10 million reward for the first privately-funded project to put people into space.

但芬尼有竞争对手。全球还有27支队伍也在制造自己的家庭自制宇宙飞船，试着成为赢得X奖励计划的第一人，这是一笔1,000万美元的奖金，以奖励第一个把人送到太空的私人基金项目。

Created in 1996 by a group of space enthusiasts and former astronauts, the X Prize will be awarded to the first team to successfully launch three humans 100 kilometers into space twice in two weeks using the same rocket.

X奖励计划于1996年由一群太空迷和前任宇航员所创立，奖金将颁给第一个成功地在两星期内使用同一艘火箭两度将三个人送进100公里远的太空的队伍。

The X Prize chairman, Peter Diamandis, expects teams will spend between $2 million and $20 million to earn the $10 million prize. That’s peanuts compared to the $8 billion NASA spent on space flight in 2003, but that’s the point. The X Prize wants to encourage creative people to think of ways to make space flight affordable, thus opening the way for space tourism.

X奖励计划的主席彼得·迪亚曼蒂斯帝，希望各队能花费200万至2,000万来赢得这1,000万奖金。和美国太空总署﹙NASA﹚2003年花在太空飞行方面的80亿比起来，这简直微不足道，但这就是重点。X奖励计划希望鼓励有创意的人想办法，好让大家负担得起太空飞行，并由此为太空旅游带来契机。

To date, only a handful of civilians have gone into space as tourists, each time paying millions of dollars for the privilege. But that’s expected to change quickly, with Japanese space officials predicting that tourists will make up three-quarters of all astronauts within 20 years.

直到现在，只有极少数平民百姓能以观光客身份进入太空，每次要为这种特殊待遇花上数百万美元。但有人预计这很快就会改变，日本航天官员预测在20年内，观光客将占宇航员总数的3/4。

Of course, a lot of NASA’s budget is spent on safety measures, which Feeny and his colleagues have to live without. “[Disaster] is a possibility,” says one team leader. “It’s a cost that comes with exploration. Otherwise you stay home and watch TV and eat French fries.”

当然，美国太空总署的许多预算是花在安全措施上的，这是芬尼和他的同事不能去考虑的地方。“﹙灾难﹚有可能发生。”一位队长说，“这是探索带来的代价。否则你就待在家里看电视吃薯条就好了。”