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英语高级视听说Unit 2 the new spsce race 答案

英语高级视听说Unit 2 the new spsce race 课后答案

Answer 1

Unit 2 The new space race
A plan to build the world's first airport for launching commercial spacecraft
in New Mexico is the latest development in the new space race, a race
among private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs to carry paying
passengers into space and to kick-start a new industry, astro tourism.

The man who is leading the race may not be familiar to you, but to
astronauts, pilots, and aeronautical engineers
–
basically to anyone who
knows anything about aircraft design
–
Burt Rutan is a legend, an
aeronautical engineer whose latest aircraft is the world's first private
spaceship. As he told
60 Minutes
correspondent Ed Bradley
when he first
met him a little over a year ago, if his idea flies, someday space travel may
be cheap enough and safe enough for ordinary people to go where only
astronauts have gone before.

The
White
Knight
is
a
rather
unusual
looking
aircraft,
built
just
for
the
purpose of carrying a rocket plane called SpaceShipOne, the first spacecraft
built by private enterprise.

White
Knight
and
SpaceShipOne
are
the
latest
creations
of
Burt
Rutan.
They're part of his dream to develop a commercial travel business in space.

"There will be a new industry. And we are just now in a beginning. I will
predict that in 12 or 15 years, there will be tens of thousands, maybe even
hundreds
of
thousands
of
people
that fly, and
see that
black
sky,"
says
Rutan.

On June 21, 2004, White Knight took off from an airstrip in Mojave, Calif.,
carrying Rutan's spaceship. It took 63 minutes to reach the launch altitude
of 47,000 feet. Once there, the White Knight crew prepared to release the
spaceship one.

The fierce acceleration slammed Mike Melvill, the pilot, back in his seat. He
put SpaceShipOne into a near vertical trajectory, until, as planned, the fuel
ran out.

Still climbing like a spent bullet, Melvill hoped to gain as much altitude as
possible to reach space before the ship began falling back to earth.

By the time the spaceship one reached the end of its climb, it was 22 miles
off course. But it had, just barely, reached an altitude of just over 62 miles

—
the internationally recognized boundary of space.

It was the news Rutan had been waiting for. Falling back to Earth from an
altitude of 62 miles, SpaceShipOne's tilting wing, a revolutionary innovation
called the feather, caused the rocket plane to position itself for a relatively
benign re-entry and turned the spaceship into a glider.

SpaceShipOne glided to a flawless landing before a crowd of thousands.

"After that June flight, I felt like I was floating around and just once in a
while touching the ground," remembers Rutan. "We had an operable space
plane."
Rutan's
"operable
space
plane"
was
built
by
a
company
with
only
130
employees at a cost of just $25 million. He believes his success has ended
the
government's
monopoly
on
space
travel,
and
opened
it
up
to
the
ordinary citizen.

"I concluded that for affordable travel to happen, the little guy had to do it
because he had the incentive for a business," says Rutan.

Does Rutan view this as a business venture or a technological challenge?

"It's a technological challenge first. And it's a dream I had when I was 12,"
he says.

Rutan started
building
model
airplanes
when
he
was seven
years
old, in
Dyenuba, Calif., where he grew up.

"I was fascinated by putting balsa wood together and see how it would fly,"
he remembers. "And when I started having the capability to do contests and
actually win a trophy by making a better model, then I was hooked."

He's been hooked ever since. He designed his first airplane in 1968 and flew
it
four
years
later
.
Since
then
his
airplanes
have
become
known
for their
stunning looks, innovative design and technological sophistication.

Rutan began designing a spaceship nearly a decade ago, after setting up set
up his own aeronautical research and design firm. By the year 2000, he had
turned his designs into models and was testing them outside his office.

"When I got to the point that I knew that I could make a safe spaceship that
would fly a manned space mission -- when I say, 'I,' not the government,
our
little
team
--
I
told
Paul
Allen,
'I
think
we
can
do
this.'
And
he
immediately said, 'Go with it.'"

Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and is one of the richest men in the world.
His decision to pump $25 million into Rutan's company, Scaled Composites,
was the vote of confidence that his engineers needed to proceed.

"That was a heck of a challenge to put in front of some people like us, where
we're told, 'Well, you can't do that. You wanna see? We can do this," says
Pete Sebold.

Work on White Knight and SpaceShipOne started four years ago in secret.
Both
aircraft
were
custom
made
from
scratch
by a
team of
12 engineers
using layers of tough carbon fabric glued together with epoxy. Designed to
be light-weight, SpaceShipOne can withstand the stress of re-entry because
of
the
radical
way
it
comes
back
into the atmosphere, like
a
badminton
shuttlecock or a birdie.

He showed
60 Minutes
how it works.

"Feathering the wing is kind of a dramatic thing, in that it changes the whole
configuration of the airplane," he explains. "And this is done in space, okay?
It's done after you fly into space."

"We have done six reentries. Three of them from space and three of them
from lower altitudes. And some of them have even come down upside down.
And the airplane by itself straightens itself right up," Rutan explains
By September 2004, Rutan was ready for his next challenge: an attempt to
win a $10 million prize to be the first to fly a privately funded spacecraft into
space, and do it twice in two weeks.

"After
we
had
flown
the
June
flight,
and
we
had
reached
the
goal of
our
program, then the most important thing was to win that prize," says Rutan.

That prize was the Ansari X Prize
–
an extraordinary competition created in
1996 to stimulate private investment in space.

The first of the two flights was piloted, once again, by Mike Melvill.

September's
flight
put
Melville's skill
and training to
the test.
As
he
was
climbing out of the atmosphere, the spacecraft suddenly went into a series
of rolls.

How concerned was he?

"Well, I thought I could work it out. I'm very confident when I'm flying a

plane when I've got the controls in my hand. I always believed I can fix this
no matter how bad it gets," says Melville.

SpaceShipOne rolled 29 times before he regained control. The remainder of
the flight was without incident, and Melvill made the 20-minute glide back to
the Mojave airport. The landing on that September afternoon was flawless.

Because Rutan wanted to attempt the second required flight just four days
later
, the engineers had little time to find out what had gone wrong. Working
12-hour shifts, they discovered they didn't need to fix the spacecraft, just
the way in which the pilots flew it.

For
the
second
flight,
it
was
test
pilot
Brian
Binnie's
turn
to
fly
SpaceShipOne.

The
spaceship
flew
upward
on
a
perfect
trajectory,
breaking
through
to
space.

Rutan's SpaceShipOne had flown to space twice in two weeks, captured the
X
Prize
worth
$10
million,
and
won
bragging
rights
over
the
space
establishment.

"You know I was wondering what they are feeling, 'They' being that other
space
agency," Rutan
says
laughing. "You know, quite
frankly, I
think the big
guys, the Boeings, the Lockheeds, the nay-say people at Houston, I think
they're looking at each other now and saying 'We're screwed!' Because, I'll
tell you something, I have a hell of a lot bigger goal than they do!"

"The astronauts say that the most exciting experience is floating around in
a space suit," says Rutan, showing off his own plans. "But I don't agree. A
space suit is an awful thing. It constrains you and it has noisy fans running.
Now look over here. It's quiet. And you're out here watching the world go by
in what you might call a 'spiritual dome.' Well, that, to me, is better than a
space suit because you're not constrained."

He
also
has a
vision
for
a
resort
hotel in space,
and says it
all
could be
accomplished in the foreseeable future. Rutan believes it is the dawn of a
new era.

He explains, "I think we've proven now that the small guys can build a space
ship and go to space. And not only that, we've convinced a rich guy, a very
rich guy, to come to
this country and build
a space program to take everyday
people to space."

That "rich guy" is Richard Branson, the English billionaire who owns Virgin
Atlantic Airlines. Branson has signed a $120 million deal with Rutan to build
five spaceships for paying customers. Named "Virgin Galactic," it will be the
world's first "spaceline." Flights are expected to begin in 2008.

"We believe by flying tens of thousands of people to space, and making that
a profitable business, that that will lead into affordable orbital travel," says
Rutan.

Rutan thinks there "absolutely" is a market for this.

With
tickets initially going for $200,000, the market is
limited. Nevertheless,
Virgin Galactic says 38,000 people have put down a deposit for a seat, and
90 of those have paid the full $200,000.

But Rutan has another vision. "The goal is affordable travel above low-Earth
orbit. In other words, affordable travel for us to go to the moon. Affordable
travel. That means not just NASA astronauts, but thousands of people being
able to go to the moon," he says. "I'd like to go. Wouldn't you?"