TED演讲:探索世界最深洞穴(8)

 What then of manned space exploration?  那载人的空间探索呢？

The government recently announced plans to return to the moon by 2024.  美国政府最近宣布了2024重返月球的计划。
The successful conclusion of that mission will result in infrequent visitation of the moon by a small number of government scientists and pilots.  这项任务的成功将使少数的政府雇佣的科学家和飞行员的探访月球活动。
It will leave us no further along in the general expansion of humanity into space than we were 50 years ago.  和五十年前相比，从人类探索宇宙的整体来看，并没有什么起步。
Something fundamental has to change if we are to see common access to space in our lifetime.  如果我们想要在有生之年让太空飞行变得习以为然必须有根本的改变。
What I'm going to show you next are a couple of controversial ideas.  我下面要展示的是一些有争论的观点。
And I hope you'll bear with me and have some faith that there's credibility behind what we're going to say here.  我希望大家耐心听我讲并且相信，我们这里所说的是确实可信的。
There are three underpinnings of working in space privately 1.  私人探索太空工作有三大支柱。
One of them is the requirement for economical earth-to-space transport.  其一是经济的地球到太空的交通运输。
The Bert Rutans and Richard Bransons of this world have got this in their sights and I salute 2 them.  创业家们象伯特?鲁坦斯和理查德?布兰特（维珍航空公司的创始人）已经开始在这方面努力,我向他们致敬。
Go, go, go.  加油，加油，加油。
The next thing we need are places to stay on orbit.  我们需要的另一件事是轨道上的停留处。
Orbital hotels to start with, but workshops for the rest of us later on.  先以做太空酒店（旅游业）开始，之后可以我们的工作站。
The final missing piece, the real paradigm-buster, is this:  最后一点，真正能扭转乾坤的是：
a gas station on orbit.  太空轨道加油站。
It's not going to look like that.  它不会是图上这样的。
If it existed, it would change all future spacecraft design and space mission planning.  如果它存在，它会改变所有未来宇宙飞船和宇宙空间探索计划的设计。
Now, to give you a chance to understand why there is power in that statement,I've got to give you the basics of Space 101.  现在，为了让大家明白此断言的分量，我要教大家一点儿太空基础知识。
And the first thing is everything you do in space you pay by the kilogram.  首先，你要为在太空里所做的每一件事情按千克付费。
Anybody drink one of these here this week?  有人这周喝过一杯这个吗？
You'd pay 10,000 dollars for that in orbit.  在轨道上你要为其支付一万美元。
That's more than you pay for TED 3,  那比你要参加TED支付的费用还要多，
if Google dropped their sponsorship.  如果谷歌撤销他们的赞助的话。
The second is more than 90 percent of the weight of a vehicle is in propellant.  其次，推进剂占百分之九十多的飞船重量。
Thus, every time you'd want to do anything in space,  因此，每次你想要在宇宙空间里做任何事，
you are literally 4 blowing away enormous sums of money every time you hit the accelerator. 每次你踩加速器时，你就是在大笔地烧钱。
Not even the guys at Tesla can fight that physics.  即使是做Tesla(极品电动跑车)的家伙们也没法战胜那个物理现象。
So, what if you could get your gas at a 10th the price?  所以，如果你能都以十分之一的价钱得到燃料会怎样？
There is a place where you can.  有个地方可以让你这样做。
In fact, you can get it better-you can get it at 14 times lower if you can find propellant on the moon.  事实上，可以更便宜--你能以十四分之一的价格得到，如果你能够在月球上发现推进剂的话。
There is a little-known mission that was launched by the Pentagon, 13 years ago now, called Clementine.  美国国防部13年展开了一个鲜为人知的，称为克莱门汀的计划。
And the most amazing thing that came out of that mission was a strong hydrogen signature at Shackleton crater 5 on the south pole of the moon. 这项计划最令人称奇的发现是在月球的南极沙克尔顿环形山探测到很强的氢气信号。
That signal was so strong,  那信号非常强，
it could only have been produced by 10 trillion tons of water buried in the sediment 6, collected over millions and billions of years by the impact of asteroids 7 and comet material. 只有沉淀地下的10万亿吨水才能生成它，那水是成百上千万年，小行星和彗星撞击遗留物汇聚而成。
If we're going to get that, and make that gas station possible,  如果我们要用这水使加油站的建造成为可能的话，
we have to figure out ways to move large volumes of payload through space.  我们必须找到在在太空中移动大量物资的方法。
We can't do that right now.  我们现在还做不到。
The way you normally build a system right now is you have a tube stack that has to be launched from the ground, 人们现在的做法是从地球使用多级火箭，
and resist all kinds of aerodynamic forces.  这种方法需要克服各种空气动力效应。