2014届辽宁营口市高考英语一轮复习精品训练：阅读理解、完形填空12含答案.docVIP

2014届辽宁营口市高考英语一轮复习精品训练：阅读理解、完形填空（12）含答案 As motorways become more and more blocked up with traffic, a new generation on flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. That is the conclusion of engineers from the US space agency and aeronautical firms, who envision future commuters traveling by “skycar”. These could look much like the concept skycar shown in the picture, designed by Boeing research and development. However, such vehicles could be some 25 years from appearing on the market. Efforts to build flying vehicles in the past have not been very successful. Such vehicles would not only be expensive and require the skills of a trained pilot to fly, but there are significant engineering challenges involved in developing them. “When you try to combine them you get the worst of both worlds: a very heavy, slow, expensive vehicle that’s hard to use,” said Mark Moore, head of the personal air vehicle(PAV) division of the vehicle systems program at Nasa’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, US. But Boeing is also considering how to police the airways-and prevent total pandemonium(吵杂狂乱的喧闹)-if thousands of flying cars enter the skies. “The neat, gee-whiz part is thinking about what the vehicle itself would look like,” said Dick Paul, a vice president with Phantom Works, Boeing’s research and development arm. “But we’re trying to think through all the consequences of what it would take to deploy(散开) a fleet of these.” Past proposals to solve this problem have included artificial intelligence systems to prevent collisions between air traffic. Nasa is working on flying vehicles with the initial goal of transforming small plane travel. Small planes are generally costly, loud, and require months of training and lots of money to operate, making flying to work impractical for most people. But within five years, Nasa researchers hope to develop technology for a small plane that can fly out of regional airports, costs less than $100,000(￡55,725), is as quiet as a mo