Elon Musk的跑车、假人和爱读的书
SpaceX的“猎鹰重型”成功发射后，英国的《卫报》写到：
It takes a beat or two for the brain to compute. The image is startling, incongruous, barmy. A car floats in space. At the wheel is a spacesuit, seatbelt on. Earth hangs behind it. The two objects don’t work together. The image jars like bad Photoshop. But it is real.
8个短句写出了科幻电影中才能出现的画面。自己的火箭载着自己的车，车里放着喜爱的歌儿，可能只有Elon Musk这样的天才和疯子才能做出这样的事情吧。我读了读相关的外媒报道，在此和你分享一些英文和彩蛋。
1. “跑车”
《纽约时报》写到：
The rocket carried a playful payload: Mr. Musk’s red Roadster, an electric sports car built by his other company, Tesla. Strapped inside the car is a mannequin wearing one of SpaceX’s spacesuits. They are expected to orbit the sun for hundreds of millions of years.
SpaceX的火箭把Elon Musk的樱桃红色特斯拉跑车送入太空。这里“跑车”的英文是Roadster，因为是个型号的名字，roadster和sports car的意思相同，都是“跑车”。
这个“跑车”是火箭的payload，payload是“酬载”的意思，可以理解为是太空飞行器中被装载的货物。我们想说“火箭把特斯拉跑车带上天了“就可以说：
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched into space on Tuesday, February 6 with Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as its payload.
2. “假人”
"假人"的英文叫dummy，也有人叫mannequin/'mænəkɪn/。
车里的这个spacesuit-clad dummy/mannequin driver叫Starman，是英国摇滚音乐人David Bowie的作品。1972年David Bowie发行专辑The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars，其中有首歌叫Starman：
歌词中有这样一段：There’s a starman waiting in the sky / He’d like to come and meet us / But he thinks he’d blow our minds.
我想Elon Musk可能是想blow their minds: Made on Earth by humans! 意不意外？惊不惊喜？！
3. “别慌”
Don't Panic!的梗来自英国科幻小说家Douglas Adams的The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy，中文一般译为《银河系漫游指南》。
在小说中，The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy是本宇宙旅行指南，和同类型作品相比它有两个优点：一是便宜，二是在封面上印着DON'T PANIC这几个大字（it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover)。
人在宇宙漂，千万不要慌，Don't Panic在句话在书中共出现了10次之多。
在Elon Musk的传记中，作者Ashlee Vance说Elon Musk从小就酷爱读书，一放学就跑去书店读书。对他影响最大的一本书之一就是The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Musk sampled a handful of ideologies and then ended up more or less back where he had started, embracing the sci-fi lessons found in one of the most influential books in his life: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. “He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said.
“Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,” he said.
《银河系漫游指南》中说生命、宇宙、任何事情的意义只是一个数字: 42，这让年轻的Musk深感兴趣。他学到，最难的是提出问题。一旦提出了问题，答案也就不远了。恭喜Musk提出问题的有了答案，让我们离greater collective enlightenment又近了一步。