介绍:
Space travel 太空旅行
Starchip enterprise造星际芯片的企业
Flying to the stars means thinking both very big and very small
主播：凤梨君 个人微信号：fenglisama 微信公众号：EnglishQiPa
Apr 16th 2016 | COLORADO SPRINGS | From the print edition
Power to the stars SPACEX and Blue Origin, two American space companies, can now return their rockets to Earth and reuse them, which promises to reduce launch costs. But what if, instead of bringing the boosters back to Earth, you could build one that never leaves it? Your propulsion system could be arbitrarily large and powerful, since you wouldn’t have to lift it; your spacecraft, no longer needing engines or fuel, could be stripped down to its barest essentials.
1 starship |ˈstɑ:ʃɪp; 美 ˈstɑ:rʃ-| 星际飞船；星舰 2 origin |ˈɒrɪdʒɪn; 美 ˈɔ:r-; ˈɑ:r-| 起源；源头；起因 3 booster |ˈbu:stə(r) 助推火箭 4 propulsion |prəˈpʌlʃn| 推动力；推进
5 arbitrary |ˈɑ:bɪtrəri; ˈɑ:bɪtri; 美 ˈɑ:rbətreri| 任意的；武断的；随心所欲的 6 strip |strɪp| 拆卸；拆开 7 bare |beə(r); 美 ber| 仅够的；最基本的；最简单的(最高级barest)
7 promises 使很可能；预示
Such a split sounds impractical, but beams of light could make it work. One of the counterintuitive implications of the theory of relativity is that, although light has no mass, it still has momentum. Thus when light bounces off a mirror it exerts a tiny pressure; if the light is bright enough, and the mirror light enough, the mirror will start moving.
In the 1970s Robert Forward, a physicist, showed that very powerful lasers could push a spacecraft with a reflecting “sail” to a tenth the speed of light or more. Moving thousands of times faster than rockets can, such probes might reach planets round other stars in decades, rather than in hundreds of thousands of years. But the incredible technical challenges of such a scheme meant that Forward’s ideas were never developed in any practical way.
1 split |splɪt| 分歧；分裂；分离 2 impractical |ɪmˈpræktɪkl| 不明智的；不现实的 3 beam |bi:m| 光线；（电波的）波束；（粒子的）束 4 counterintuitive [kaʊntərɪn'tju:ɪtɪv] 违反直觉的
5 implication |ˌɪmplɪˈkeɪʃn| 含意；暗指 6 mass |mæs| 质量 7 momentum |məˈmentəm; 美 moʊˈm-| 推进力；动力；势头; 冲力；动量 8 bounces off 弹回;弹开 9 bounce |baʊns| （使）弹起，弹跳；反射 10 exert |ɪgˈzɜ:t; 美 ɪgˈzɜ:rt| 运用；行使；施加 11 probe |prəʊb; 美 proʊb| （不载人）航天探测器，宇宙探测航天器 12 scheme |ski:m| 计划；方案；体系；体制
That could be about to change. On April 12th, the 55th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space, Yuri Milner, a Russian physicist and billionaire investor, announced a plan to develop the technologies such interstellar flight would need. Mr Milner—who was named after Gagarin—is devoting himself to the challenges of deep space. Last year he said he would spend $100m to bring recent advances in computing to bear on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
1 interstellar |ˌɪntəˈstelə(r); 美 -tərˈst-| 星际的 2 bear on 和（某事物）有关；涉及 3 extraterrestrial |ˌekstrətəˈrestriəl| （故事中的）天外来客，外星人，外星生物
When he first looked at laser-powered interstellar travel, Mr Milner says, the idea triggered both his scepticism as a physicist and his cynicism as a businessman. But he has concluded that, as in the case of SETI, technological capacities developed for other reasons will be a boon. Given current trends in microelectronics, nanotechnology and lasers, he thinks that within a generation attempts at interstellar flight might be no more costly than today’s most ambitious scientific programmes. So he is going to spend $100m on a “Breakthrough Starshot” research programme aimed at making that dream possible.
1 trigger |ˈtrɪgə(r)| 发动；引起；触发 2 scepticism |ˈskeptɪsɪzəm| 怀疑态度；怀疑主义 3 cynic |ˈsɪnɪk| 认为人皆自私的人；愤世嫉俗者 4 cynicism ['sɪnɪsɪzəm] 认为世人皆自私的观念;愤世嫉俗;(对成功或人的真善的）怀疑 5 boon |bu:n| 非常有用的东西；益处 6 microelectronics |ˌmaɪkrəʊɪˌlekˈtrɒnɪks; 美 -kroʊɪˌlekˈtrɑ:n-| 微电子学 7 nanotechnology|ˌnænəʊtekˈnɒlədʒi; 美 -ˈnɑ:l-|纳米技术8 interstellar |ˌɪntəˈstelə(r); 美 -tərˈst-| 星际的 9 ambitious |æmˈbɪʃəs| 有野心的；有雄心的
The basic problem with using light to drive a spacecraft is low efficiency. A gigawatt laser beam—1GW being a billion watts, roughly the power output of a large nuclear plant—provides a bit less than seven newtons of thrust: a force equivalent to that required to lift a glass of beer. For such thimblefuls of thrust to amount to anything much, they have to be applied to a very light spacecraft indeed: ideally one with a mass not much larger than a gram.
1 gigawatt ['dʒaɪgəwɒt] 十亿瓦特 2 newton |ˈnju:tən; 美 ˈnu:-| 牛顿（力的单位 ) 3 thrust|θrʌst|（发动机推动飞机、火箭等的）推力，驱动力 4 thimbleful |ˈθɪmblfʊl| 少量液体（尤指酒）5 gram |græm| 克
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