The end of the Space Age

　　太空時代的結束

　　HOW big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is theatmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planets true diameter is actually nearer13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For theEarth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites,forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only afew hundred kilometres above the planets solid surface. Many, though, form a ring likeSaturns at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit theEarth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.

　　地球有多大?任何一本百科全書都會給你答案：赤道直徑是12,756公里，或者，用英里來表達7,926英里。嗯，但是大氣層有多大呢?也能計算嗎? 包括空氣在內，地球的直徑可能接近13,000公里。甚至連這個數據也不夠充分。因為現在地球的變化太大。包圍大氣層的外部空間人造衛星來去匆匆，形成一個在大氣層外面的所謂技術層。大部分衛星繞行高度離地球地表僅幾百公里。然而，在距地球36,000公里的軌道上物體繞轉地球一周的時間為24小時，這個物體飛行時持續面對的是地球上的不變的同一個點，這樣許多地球同步衛星的運行會形成一個類似的土星環。

　　Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. Andviewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weatherforecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised.So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exactlocation of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioningsystems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

　　從這個方面看，地球比傳統的教科書上的回答其實要大很多。這樣看來，太空時代已經有了相當的成功。電信業，天氣預測，農業，林業，甚至是在礦藏搜尋方面都有了徹底變革。戰爭也同樣如此，再也沒有政府能秘密地調兵遣將。這顆星球上的每一幢建筑物的位置都能被精確掌握。基于衛星的全球定位系統能按要求指引智能炸彈到達目標。

　　Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged bythe enthusiastic space cadets who got the wholething going. Though engineers like Wernher vonBraun, who built the rockets for both Germanyssecond-world-war V2 project and Americas cold-warApollo project, sold their souls to the militaryestablishment in order to pursue their dreams ofspace travel by the only means then available, mostof them had their eyes on a higher prize. First Mento a Geostationary Orbit does not have quite thesame ring as First Men to the Moon, a book vonBraun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early spacerockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American spaceproject and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of Star Trek and2001: A Space Odyssey. Other planets may or may not have been inhabited by aliens,but they, and even other stars, were there for the taking. That the taking would begin in thelifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

　　然而沒有這些推動太空事業發展的太空學員的滿腔熱情，太空時代便無法想象。工程師們為了實現遨游太空的夢想全身心地投入到軍事機構中，這是唯一的可以獲得使用的途徑。比如工程師Wernher Braun，他為二戰時期的德國V2計劃和冷戰時期的美國阿波羅計劃分別建造了火箭。雖然他們中很多人是為了獲得高額的獎金。工程師Wernher Braun在1958年的一本書中寫道，第一個到達與地球同步軌道的人并沒有得到第一個到達月球的人同樣的花環。二十世紀五六十年代，當早期的意在探索冒險的太空火箭升空時，太空遨游的幻想就更熱切了。事實上，美國的太空計劃署和蘇聯的太空部門已經忽略了像星際旅行和2001：太空冒險這樣的完美的幻想。

　　No longer. It is quite conceivable that 36,000km will prove the limit of human ambition. It isequally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return tofantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

　　從此不再幻想。36,000公里成為人類抱負的極限，這件事會相當可信。人類太空飛翔的夢想成為現實，而退回想象也將變得同樣可信。換言之，太空時代即將結束。

　　Bye-bye, sci-fi

　　再見，科學幻想

　　Todays space cadets will, no doubt, oppose that claim vigorously. They will, in particular,point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson inBritain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise ofsuch people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, spacetourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best. The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted InternationalSpace Station , surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that hasever been built in the name of science.

　　毫無疑問，今天的太空學員們會強烈反對這個聲稱。他們尤其會提到希望以商業方式實現太空飛翔的個人冒險者，比如美國的Elon Musk和英國的Sir Richard Branson。這些計劃冒險的人果真也會像太空學員們一樣予以反對。但是這個市場似乎很小也很脆弱。一方面，太空旅行是一項奢侈的服務，不像沖出地球低軌道那么容易。另外一方面，是把宇航員飛渡到蒙昧的國際太空站所需要的資金來源，無疑是最大的浪費，已經花了千億美金卻還在增長，那個曾經是以科學的名義建立起來的。

　　The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking 2011 might, in the historybooks of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets dream finally died. It marks theend of Americas space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th. The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make thebusiness of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble.Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, thatwould not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But thepretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used byNASA, Space Transportation System, says it all.

　　上面提到的第二個理由也許將成為另外一個理由，即未來的歷史書將把2011年視作太空學員夢想破滅的一年。它標志著美國航天計劃的結束，該計劃的最后使命是完成7月8日的發射。太空飛船被假設為一輛能重復使用的貨車以期實現把人送往同步軌道的商業事宜。事實是它什么也沒完成卻帶來了麻煩。它曾兩次失事扼殺全部乘員。事實上它只是個試驗性運輸工具，要不它不應該有讓人焦慮的特別理由;宇航員不時的被害。但是太空飛船只是一架普通飛機的假設需要維護。其使用的科學術語是NASA，其實它只是一個太空運輸系統。

　　But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in2023. Once that happens, the game will be up. Thereis no appetite to return to the moon, let alone pushon to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. Thetechnology could be there, but the passion hasgoneat least in the traditional spacefaring powers,America and Russia.

　　太空飛船事業即將結束。到2023年，ISS將被重設軌道。事情一旦發生，游戲就將終結。再也沒有重返月球的欲望，更不用談火星推進計劃，太空探險的ElDorado計劃。技術仍然存在，但是激情已然消失至少就傳統的太空強國，美國和蘇聯而言。

　　The space cadets other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, likePresident John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and returnthem safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedys bythe end of the decade bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even ifChina succeeds in matching Americas distant triumph, it still faces the question, what next?The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixons in 1972, will say job doneand pull the plug on the whole shebang.

　　太空學員們的另一個希望之地，中國，也許將拾起接力棒。確定中國就像50年之前的約翰肯尼迪一樣宣布并希望要把人類送達月球表面并安全返回地球。但完成這一愿望的日期看起來是有彈性的。來自北京的宣告缺乏肯尼迪的堅信到這個年代末。。而且，即使中國成功地對接了美國的遙遠的勝利，它仍需面對這個問題，接下來怎么樣?屬于中國領導人的那一時刻，是否會像 1972年的尼克松一樣說任務完成了然后拔下整個系統的插頭呢。

　　No bucks, no Buck Rogers

　　沒有激情，也沒有太空英雄

　　With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is ofdiminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surfacebar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to thestamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, publicinterest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.

　　好在針對太陽系的機器探測仍將持續。但即便如此，風險猶存，因為回報越來越少。現在太陽系中的每顆行星都已經被偵察過，每一顆表面是固體的行星，使者Mercury都已經登陸過。小行星，衛星和彗星已經增加到集郵冊里。除非火星上出現生命，或者出現未曾預料之地，公眾對探索宇宙的興趣可能越來越弱。而為它買單的依然是廣大的民眾。

　　The future, then, looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationaryorbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of spacewill be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past.Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as mensometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice capbefore returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanitys dreams of a futurebeyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

　　那么，未來看來要被限制在地球的新的外邊界之內，即同步軌道。在這層空間里，各種活動的嗡嗡聲將繼續增長而充滿了整個空間。這部分空間將被人類馴服，就像在過去物種馴服了這么多的荒野。而36,000之外的空間仍將是空的。可能也會有偶爾的突襲，就像在南極考察的人們有時為了溫暖、食物和朋友離開他們的扎堆而設的研究基地，在返回之前，這些基地早已沉沒在南極洲的冰蓋之下。但人類想超越領域最前沿的未來夢想已經，褪色很多。

　　The end of the Space Age

　　太空時代的結束

　　HOW big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is theatmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planets true diameter is actually nearer13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For theEarth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites,forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only afew hundred kilometres above the planets solid surface. Many, though, form a ring likeSaturns at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit theEarth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.

　　地球有多大?任何一本百科全書都會給你答案：赤道直徑是12,756公里，或者，用英里來表達7,926英里。嗯，但是大氣層有多大呢?也能計算嗎? 包括空氣在內，地球的直徑可能接近13,000公里。甚至連這個數據也不夠充分。因為現在地球的變化太大。包圍大氣層的外部空間人造衛星來去匆匆，形成一個在大氣層外面的所謂技術層。大部分衛星繞行高度離地球地表僅幾百公里。然而，在距地球36,000公里的軌道上物體繞轉地球一周的時間為24小時，這個物體飛行時持續面對的是地球上的不變的同一個點，這樣許多地球同步衛星的運行會形成一個類似的土星環。

　　Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. Andviewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weatherforecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised.So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exactlocation of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioningsystems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

　　從這個方面看，地球比傳統的教科書上的回答其實要大很多。這樣看來，太空時代已經有了相當的成功。電信業，天氣預測，農業，林業，甚至是在礦藏搜尋方面都有了徹底變革。戰爭也同樣如此，再也沒有政府能秘密地調兵遣將。這顆星球上的每一幢建筑物的位置都能被精確掌握。基于衛星的全球定位系統能按要求指引智能炸彈到達目標。

　　Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged bythe enthusiastic space cadets who got the wholething going. Though engineers like Wernher vonBraun, who built the rockets for both Germanyssecond-world-war V2 project and Americas cold-warApollo project, sold their souls to the militaryestablishment in order to pursue their dreams ofspace travel by the only means then available, mostof them had their eyes on a higher prize. First Mento a Geostationary Orbit does not have quite thesame ring as First Men to the Moon, a book vonBraun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early spacerockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American spaceproject and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of Star Trek and2001: A Space Odyssey. Other planets may or may not have been inhabited by aliens,but they, and even other stars, were there for the taking. That the taking would begin in thelifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

　　然而沒有這些推動太空事業發展的太空學員的滿腔熱情，太空時代便無法想象。工程師們為了實現遨游太空的夢想全身心地投入到軍事機構中，這是唯一的可以獲得使用的途徑。比如工程師Wernher Braun，他為二戰時期的德國V2計劃和冷戰時期的美國阿波羅計劃分別建造了火箭。雖然他們中很多人是為了獲得高額的獎金。工程師Wernher Braun在1958年的一本書中寫道，第一個到達與地球同步軌道的人并沒有得到第一個到達月球的人同樣的花環。二十世紀五六十年代，當早期的意在探索冒險的太空火箭升空時，太空遨游的幻想就更熱切了。事實上，美國的太空計劃署和蘇聯的太空部門已經忽略了像星際旅行和2001：太空冒險這樣的完美的幻想。

　　No longer. It is quite conceivable that 36,000km will prove the limit of human ambition. It isequally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return tofantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

　　從此不再幻想。36,000公里成為人類抱負的極限，這件事會相當可信。人類太空飛翔的夢想成為現實，而退回想象也將變得同樣可信。換言之，太空時代即將結束。

　　Bye-bye, sci-fi

　　再見，科學幻想

　　Todays space cadets will, no doubt, oppose that claim vigorously. They will, in particular,point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson inBritain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise ofsuch people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, spacetourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best. The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted InternationalSpace Station , surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that hasever been built in the name of science.

　　毫無疑問，今天的太空學員們會強烈反對這個聲稱。他們尤其會提到希望以商業方式實現太空飛翔的個人冒險者，比如美國的Elon Musk和英國的Sir Richard Branson。這些計劃冒險的人果真也會像太空學員們一樣予以反對。但是這個市場似乎很小也很脆弱。一方面，太空旅行是一項奢侈的服務，不像沖出地球低軌道那么容易。另外一方面，是把宇航員飛渡到蒙昧的國際太空站所需要的資金來源，無疑是最大的浪費，已經花了千億美金卻還在增長，那個曾經是以科學的名義建立起來的。

　　The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking 2011 might, in the historybooks of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets dream finally died. It marks theend of Americas space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th. The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make thebusiness of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble.Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, thatwould not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But thepretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used byNASA, Space Transportation System, says it all.

　　上面提到的第二個理由也許將成為另外一個理由，即未來的歷史書將把2011年視作太空學員夢想破滅的一年。它標志著美國航天計劃的結束，該計劃的最后使命是完成7月8日的發射。太空飛船被假設為一輛能重復使用的貨車以期實現把人送往同步軌道的商業事宜。事實是它什么也沒完成卻帶來了麻煩。它曾兩次失事扼殺全部乘員。事實上它只是個試驗性運輸工具，要不它不應該有讓人焦慮的特別理由;宇航員不時的被害。但是太空飛船只是一架普通飛機的假設需要維護。其使用的科學術語是NASA，其實它只是一個太空運輸系統。

　　But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in2023. Once that happens, the game will be up. Thereis no appetite to return to the moon, let alone pushon to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. Thetechnology could be there, but the passion hasgoneat least in the traditional spacefaring powers,America and Russia.

　　太空飛船事業即將結束。到2023年，ISS將被重設軌道。事情一旦發生，游戲就將終結。再也沒有重返月球的欲望，更不用談火星推進計劃，太空探險的ElDorado計劃。技術仍然存在，但是激情已然消失至少就傳統的太空強國，美國和蘇聯而言。

　　The space cadets other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, likePresident John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and returnthem safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedys bythe end of the decade bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even ifChina succeeds in matching Americas distant triumph, it still faces the question, what next?The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixons in 1972, will say job doneand pull the plug on the whole shebang.

　　太空學員們的另一個希望之地，中國，也許將拾起接力棒。確定中國就像50年之前的約翰肯尼迪一樣宣布并希望要把人類送達月球表面并安全返回地球。但完成這一愿望的日期看起來是有彈性的。來自北京的宣告缺乏肯尼迪的堅信到這個年代末。。而且，即使中國成功地對接了美國的遙遠的勝利，它仍需面對這個問題，接下來怎么樣?屬于中國領導人的那一時刻，是否會像 1972年的尼克松一樣說任務完成了然后拔下整個系統的插頭呢。

　　No bucks, no Buck Rogers

　　沒有激情，也沒有太空英雄

　　With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is ofdiminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surfacebar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to thestamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, publicinterest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.

　　好在針對太陽系的機器探測仍將持續。但即便如此，風險猶存，因為回報越來越少。現在太陽系中的每顆行星都已經被偵察過，每一顆表面是固體的行星，使者Mercury都已經登陸過。小行星，衛星和彗星已經增加到集郵冊里。除非火星上出現生命，或者出現未曾預料之地，公眾對探索宇宙的興趣可能越來越弱。而為它買單的依然是廣大的民眾。

　　The future, then, looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationaryorbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of spacewill be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past.Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as mensometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice capbefore returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanitys dreams of a futurebeyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

　　那么，未來看來要被限制在地球的新的外邊界之內，即同步軌道。在這層空間里，各種活動的嗡嗡聲將繼續增長而充滿了整個空間。這部分空間將被人類馴服，就像在過去物種馴服了這么多的荒野。而36,000之外的空間仍將是空的。可能也會有偶爾的突襲，就像在南極考察的人們有時為了溫暖、食物和朋友離開他們的扎堆而設的研究基地，在返回之前，這些基地早已沉沒在南極洲的冰蓋之下。但人類想超越領域最前沿的未來夢想已經，褪色很多。