TE||A spectacular spaceflight
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猎鹰重型火箭成功发射
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A spectacular spaceflight
航天伟业
本文英文部分选自经济学人Science and Technology版块
A spectacular spaceflight
航天伟业
The Falcon Heavy’s successful flight is another vindication for Elon Musk
“猎鹰重型”火箭的成功飞行为埃隆·马斯克正名
And another headache for SpaceX’s competitors
也让Space X的竞争者倍感头疼
IT WAS not the most powerful launch ever seen at the Kennedy Space Centre’s Pad 39A; almost half a century ago the Apollo programme’s mighty Saturn V made use of it. But if the Falcon Heavy that took off from 39A on February 6th could boast only half the thrust of those bygone giants, its successful maiden voyage still proved it the most powerful rocket in the world today, as well as the most technologically advanced.
这并不是肯尼迪航天中心39A有史以来发射的最强大火箭；大约半世纪以前执行阿波罗计划的“土星五号”火箭也曾在这里升空。2月6号从39A发射的“猎鹰重型”火箭的推力虽然仅仅只是“土星五号”的一半，但其的成功首航也能证明它是当今世界上最强大且技术最先进的火箭。
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, the firm which built the Falcon Heavy, had been frank about the possibility that the launch might fail, possibly spectacularly. The prospect of fireworks helped to entice the biggest crowd of spectators at Cape Canaveral since the heyday of the Space Shuttle, and an audience of half a million to a live webcast.
太空探索公司（SpaceX）的创始人埃隆·马斯克之前很坦率的说这次发射可能会失败，而且可能会很“壮观”，“猎鹰重型”就是由这家公司生产的。卡纳维拉尔角可能会上演的“烟花表演”吸引了自航天飞机全盛时期以来最多的观众，此外还有五十万人守着现场的网络直播。
After a delay caused by strong winds the assembled spectators witnessed a balletic display of technological prowess. Most rockets are one-use wonders, all their components falling into the sea or burning up in the atmosphere once their payloads are in orbit. SpaceX, though, has pioneered the idea of flying rocket stages back to Earth, ready to be re-used. Recovering one rocket is impressive enough. The Falcon Heavy is made up of three individual boosters strapped together, and SpaceX had said it would try to recover all of them at once.
“猎鹰重型”火箭的发射因为风大被推迟，之后观众们目睹了一场先进技术的完美演出。大多数火箭都是一次性的，当它们将负载送入轨道之后，火箭的所有部件都会坠入汪洋大海或是在空中燃尽。但是Space X率先尝试让火箭飞回地球，再次利用。回收火箭着实令人惊叹。猎鹰重型的3个独立的助推器是捆绑在一起的，Space X 公司声称将把所有助推器一次性回收。
Sure enough, shortly after the Falcon Heavy roared off into the sky, two of its boosters reappeared, their landings just a stone’s throw from the launch pad almost perfectly synchronised. The rocket’s central booster, though, did not manage its own landing, which was to have been on a robotic landing ship out to sea.
猎鹰重型一飞冲天后不久，两个助推器几乎同时在发射台不远处着陆。不过，原本应该降落在海上一个无人驾驶的着陆船上的中央助推器并未实现自动着陆。
https://item.btime.com/m_984872eb84bdb48d7(中央助推器未能成功着陆的原因)
That was a small spot on an otherwise spectacular success. In a nice bit of cross-promotion, the cargo for the flight was a sports car made by Tesla, Mr Musk’s electric-car firm. SpaceX has plans to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, so the car was occupied by a mannequin modelling the firm’s newly developed spacesuit. After it has orbited the Earth for about five hours the second stage of the Falcon, to which it is still attached, will fire up for a final time and send it out into the solar system. It will orbit the sun between Earth and Mars for the next few million years, unless some future entrepreneur with an eye for good publicity decides to go out and bring it back.
那不过是巨大成功里的一个小瑕疵。“猎鹰重型”负载着马斯克的电动汽车公司Tesla生产的一款跑车成功发射，这达到了很好的交叉推广的效果。SpaceX 计划将宇航员送上国际空间站，所以跑车上配置了一个人体模型，穿着公司新开发的航天服。当“猎鹰”绕着地球轨道飞行大约5小时后，它的第二段会进行最后一次点火，将自己送到太阳系中。在未来的几百万年间，它会在地球和火星之间的轨道上绕着太阳转，除非一些未来的企业家为了出出风头，决定走出去并将它带回来。
The Falcon Heavy’s performance was about more than just marketing. Its success is another vindication of Mr Musk’s policy of producing modular components in volume with the aim of building a fleet of cheap, reusable spacecraft. The Falcon Heavy uses three boosters that are derived from the Falcon 9, SpaceX’s existing rocket, each of which in turn is driven by nine identical Merlin engines. Its two side boosters had both flown before.
“猎鹰重型”的表现不仅仅是市场营销。它的成功还证明了马斯克在批量生产模块化组件政策上的正确性，其目的在于生产一批便宜、可重复使用的航天器。“猎鹰重型”使用的三架助推器来源于SpaceX的现役火箭“猎鹰九号”，每架助推器都由9个相同的梅林引擎驱动。两侧的助推器之前都成功飞行过。
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)
The Falcon Heavy’s development stands in stark contrast to NASA’s own heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). When the SLS was unveiled in 2011, SpaceX was still a start-up that had yet to launch a satellite into geosynchronous orbit. In 2017, SpaceX completed 18 missions, recovered 14 boosters, and sent five of them back into space. The SLS, by contrast, uses engines originally designed in the 1960s and left over from the Space Shuttle programme. It is designed to preserve existing space-industry jobs as much as it is to fly cargo into orbit. Its maiden voyage is not expected until 2020.
“重型猎鹰”运载火箭的发展与美国宇航局自己的重型火箭，空间发射系统（SLS）形成鲜明对比。 当SLS于2011年发布时，SpaceX仍然是尚未将卫星发射到地球同步轨道的初创公司。 2017年，SpaceX完成了18次任务，回收了14次助推器，并将其中5个重新送回太空。 相比之下，SLS依然使用设计于20世纪60年代并从航天飞机计划中遗留下来的发动机。 它旨在维持现有的太空产业的工作的同时将货物送入轨道。他的首次航程预计到2020年。
The day before the launch, Mr Musk had said that success would mean “game over” for other launch providers. SpaceX’s mastery of reusability means its launch prices are far lower than those of its competitors. The $90m price tag of a Falcon Heavy launch is about a quarter the price of the next most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, which is produced by a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing—and which can haul only half as much cargo into orbit. And it is a tenth of what a single launch of the SLS is expected to cost.
在发射前一天，马斯克先生曾表示，成功将意味着其他发射提供商的“游戏结束”。 SpaceX对复用性的掌握意味着其发布价格远低于其竞争对手。“猎鹰重型”运载火箭发射的9,000万美元的价格大约是另一个最强大火箭Delta IV Heavy（德尔塔IV型重型火箭）的四分之一，Delta IV Heavy（德尔塔IV型重型火箭）由洛克希德·马丁公司和波音公司合资生产，并且只能运载相当于“猎鹰重型”一半运力的货物进入轨道。 这是SLS预计单次发射费用的十分之一。
Future SpaceX rockets will be bigger still. On Monday Mr Musk hinted at the possibility of a Falcon Super Heavy, comprising five boosters and 45 engines. It is less clear how big the market for such beefy rockets really is: the Delta IV Heavy has launched just nine times since its maiden flight in 2004. If the SLS were to be cancelled, though, being able to sell NASA such beasts for missions to the Moon might be a nice earner.
太空技术探索公司未来的火箭甚至要造的更大。周一，马斯克先生暗示猎鹰超重型运载火箭将会由五个助推器和45个发动机组成。如此强劲的火箭到底有多大市场还不确定：三角洲四号运载火箭自2014年的首航以来，到现在才发射了九次。如果能撤销太空发射系统（SLS）,把这么牛的火箭卖给NASA去执行去月球的任务，说不定实惠多了。
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy
Domination of the rocket-launch market is, for Mr Musk, only one leg on the journey to his eventual goal: the colonisation of Mars. SpaceX is already developing a gargantuan vehicle called the Big Fucking Rocket (BFR), which it says will replace all of the firm’s existing rockets and whose lifting power is necessary to realise Mr Musk’s Martian dreams. If it does fly (and its maiden launch is pencilled in for the early 2020s) it will be, by far, the most powerful rocket ever built—yet, says Mr Musk, even cheaper than a Falcon 9. Hubris? Perhaps. But Mr Musk has confounded his critics time and again. After all, when SpaceX was founded in 2002, few would have predicted it successfully using the world’s most powerful rocket to send an electric sports car piloted by an artificial astronaut out into the solar system.
对于马斯克先生而言，主宰火箭发射市场只是迈出了达终极目标（殖民火星）的第一步。未来太空技术探索公司已经在发开一种叫“超级大火箭”(BFR)的巨大运载工具，它将替换掉公司现有所有火箭，其推动力必将帮助实现马斯克先生的梦想。如果它真的发射（其首发时间暂定在2020年初）它会成为目前所建，最强大的火箭。但是，马斯克先生指出价格要比猎鹰九号运输火箭便宜。自信过头？也许吧。但是，马斯克先生一次次让批评怀疑落了空。毕竟，当未来太空技术探索公司初建于2002年，有几个人能想到这家公司成功用世界上最强大的火箭运了一辆由假人宇航员开着的电动跑车到太阳系。
翻译组：
Xingyi，男，小硕，经济学人爱好者
Minjia，女，广告策划，经济学人读者
Yifei，女，英专硕士，专八，catti二笔
Helga，女，笔译民工，经济学人爱好者
Vambie，女，互联网民工，经济学人爱好者
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Frank，男，小硕，经济学人爱好者
Joel，男，产品运营，科技类外刊爱好者
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观点 |评论|思考
1月26号发的文章size matters 中提到马斯克对本次“猎鹰重型运载火箭发射”抱有的期望值并不高，但没想到整个过程几乎完美，除了一个助推器没有成功回收，这无疑又为马斯克的下次融资做了一个很好的铺垫。
而就在重型猎鹰火箭升空一天后，特斯拉发布了2017年四季度及全年财报，财报继续亏损，主要原因还是受制于Model3产能问题，虽然订单特别多，但是产能受到电池产能、供应链等各个因素的影响，所以要在短时间内解决恐怕特别难。
那么我们总会有一个疑问，为什么一个亏损的公司，还是能特别顺利的融到钱呢？其实答案是不言而喻的，火箭的成功发射给了投资者无限的遐想，而反过来特斯拉的大卖也同样给了投资者想象的空间，毋庸置疑，Telsa是电动汽车的引领者，而且一直是处于东方不败的位置，所以眼前的亏损或许对投资者来说并不算什么。
当然小编认为，Tesla面临的产能问题，非一日两日就能解决，建设厂房，生厂线投产等等一系列都需要时间，而且它面临的强劲对手是中国的电动车企业，稍不留神，Tesla市场份额就有可能被对手们蚕食，而一旦失去先发优势，再想夺回，恐怕是难上加难。
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