The Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle Columbia, April 12 1981

NASA's next major project was the space shuttle, which the agency promoted as a means of reliable and economical access to space. As it developed the shuttle during the 1970s, NASA also pursued the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project with the Soviets, Skylab, and a series of unmanned exploratory missions, including the Viking probe of Mars. The shuttle began flying in 1981. Although the shuttle proved not to be as efficient as NASA promised, more than twenty flights had taken place by the end of 1985.

On 28 January 1986, tragedy struck. The shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The disaster stunned NASA and the nation. A presidential commission investigating the accident sharply criticized NASA's management and safety procedures. After revamping the program, shuttle flights resumed in 1988.

The Space Station

The 1990s saw NASA make significant improvements to the shuttle program, pursue a variety of unmanned missions (including the impressive Hubble Space Telescope), continue research in aeronautics and space science, and work on its next major project, an orbiting space station. Hampered by budgetary restraints and widespread criticisms of the initial station design, the project progressed slowly. In the mid-1980s, NASA had announced that the station would be a cooperative effort. Fifteen other nations-including Russia, America's former rival in space-eventually joined with the United States to develop the International Space Station (ISS). Russia's own space station, Mir, orbited the Earth from 1986 to 2001.

In late 1998, the first of more than forty space flights needed to transport and assemble the station in orbit took place. Plans originally called for international crews of up to seven astronauts to stay on the station for three to six months at a time. However, unexpectedly high development costs, plus unexpectedly low financial contributions from Russia, forced NASA to scale back the project to save money. The first crew to inhabit the station arrived in November 2000. Assembly of the station was scheduled for completion around 2004.

考考你

用今日所學將下面的句子譯成英語。

1. 保安查了每個看起來在30歲以下人的身份證。
2. 爸爸對歌劇一無所知，他看不出來它有什么好的。
3. 她忽然想到他可能迷路了。

The Departed《無間道風云》（精講之四）考考你 參考答案

1. 她一點都不在乎他會不會來。
She doesn't give a shit if he comes or not.

2. 買這些圣誕禮物會讓我們接下來幾個月都經濟拮據。
Buying all these Christmas presents will put us in the hole for the next few months.

3. 別告訴我你又要搞砸了。
Don't tell me you're going to fuck up again.


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(英語點津Annabel編輯)

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