公共课英语一模拟题2020年(337).docVIP

公共课英语一模拟题2020年(337) (总分-20,考试时间180分钟) 翻译题 For a few minutes on the afternoon of Friday April 8th millions of eyes were focused on Cape Canaveral in Florida, and shortly afterwards on a remote drone barge a couple of hundred miles downrange in a choppy Atlantic Ocean. 【F1】The cause of all this attention was SpaceXs launch of a heavy payload to space, with a later meeting with the International Space Station, and a critical attempt to return the 1st stage booster rocket safely to Earth. As reported by pretty much every media outlet across the planet, the Falcon 9 made a gloriously easy-looking powered return and landing on SpaceXs drone ship. So whats the big deal? 【F2】First getting the biggest and costliest piece of launch hardware back in one piece offers the possibility of reusing it and lowering the expense of reaching space. Back in the last year, SpaceX had already got a Falcon 9 booster to return to within shouting distance of where it had launched from some ten minutes earlier—on a neighboring pad at Cape Canaveral. 【F3】Although it remains to be seen how well these rockets hold up to reconditioning and relaunch, the basic idea is sound Reuse means drastically lower launch costs in the long run. It might cost $60 million to build one of SpaceXs boosters, but on a few hundred thousand dollars to refuel it. Even if making it flight-worthy again costs several million dollars of engineering tinkering and fixing, thats still an enormous saving. 【F4】As Elon Musk and many others have long stated, dropping the cost per-unit-mass of launching to space is critical if our species is going to explore and utilize the solar system. Its also the key to ensuring our long-term survival. Mars has a long lure, and SpaceX is in many ways built from the ground up to create the bridge to our 4th planet. 【F5】But apart from simply getting off the Earth and hauling infrastructure and people to this red world, you also have to deposit all of that safely on the su