The End of the Space Age

太空時代的結束

Inner space is useful. Outer space is history

研究內(nèi)太空才有用，讓外太空研究成為歷史

How big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is 12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is the atmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planet’s true diameter is actually nearer 13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For the Earth 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 a few hundred kilometres above the planet’s solid surface. Many, though, form a ring like Saturn’s at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth 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12756公里，或者，用英里來表達7926英里。嗯，但是大氣層有多大呢?也能計算嗎? 包括空氣(大氣層)在內(nèi)，地球的直徑可能接近13000公里。甚至連這個數(shù)據(jù)也不夠充分。因為現(xiàn)在地球的變化太大(遠離平靜的狀態(tài))。包圍大氣層的外部空間人造衛(wèi)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(wèi)星繞行高度離地球地表僅幾百公里。然而，在距地球36000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(xù)面對的是地球上的不變的同一個點，這樣許多地球同步衛(wèi)星的運行會形成一個類似的土星環(huán)。

Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. And viewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weather forecasting, 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 exact location of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioning systems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

從這個方面看，地球比傳統(tǒng)的教科書上的回答其實要大很多。這樣看來，太空時代已經(jīng)有了相當?shù)某晒Αｋ娦艠I(yè)，天氣預測，農(nóng)業(yè)，林業(yè)，甚至是在礦藏搜尋方面都有了徹底變革。戰(zhàn)爭也同樣如此，再也沒有政府能秘密地調(diào)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(wèi)星的全球定位系統(tǒng)能按要求指引智能炸彈到達目標。

Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged by the enthusiastic “space cadets” who got the whole thing going. Though engineers like Wernher von Braun, who built the rockets for both Germany’s second-world-war V2 project and America’s cold-war Apollo project, sold their souls to the military establishment in order to pursue their dreams of space travel by the only means then available, most of them had their eyes on a higher prize. “First Men to a Geostationary Orbit” does not have quite the same ring as “First Men to the Moon”, a book von Braun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early space rockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American space project and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of “Star Trek” and “2001: 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 the lifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

然而沒有這些推動太空事業(yè)發(fā)展的太空學員的滿腔熱情，太空時代便無法想象。工程師們?yōu)榱藢崿F(xiàn)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(zhàn)時期的德國V2計劃和冷戰(zhàn)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(huán)。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(lián)的太空部門已經(jīng)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 is equally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return to fantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

從此不再幻想。36000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(xiàn)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

Today’s 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 in Britain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise of such people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful). The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted International Space Station (ISS), surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that has ever 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(yè)方式實現(xiàn)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(這些如同與月球距離一般可觀的巨額花費使?jié)撛诳腿说臄?shù)字減少到幾個)。另外一方面，是把宇航員飛渡到蒙昧的國際太空站(ISS)所需要的資金來源，無疑是最大的浪費，已經(jīng)花了千億美金卻還在增長，那個曾經(jīng)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 history books of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets’ dream finally died. It marks the end of America’s 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 the business 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, that would not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But the pretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used by NASA, “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(fā)射。太空飛船被假設為一輛能重復使用的貨車以期實現(xiàn)把人送往同步軌道的商業(yè)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(哥倫比亞號和挑戰(zhàn)者號)。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(tǒng)”。

But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone – at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia.

太空飛船事業(yè)即將結束。到2020年，ISS將被重設軌道(這個領域的不雅的術語)。事情一旦發(fā)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El Dorado計劃。技術仍然存在，但是激情已然消失——至少就傳統(tǒng)的太空強國，美國和蘇聯(lián)而言。

The space cadets’ other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, like President John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedy’s “by the end of the decade” bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even if China succeeds in matching America’s distant triumph, it still faces the question, “what next?” The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixon’s in 1972, will say “job done” and 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”。(阿波羅11號在1969年7月20日登陸月球)。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(tǒng)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 of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to the stamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, public interest 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(xù)。但即便如此，風險猶存，因為回報越來越少。現(xiàn)在太陽系中的每顆行星都已經(jīng)被偵察過，每一顆表面是固體的行星，使者Mercury都已經(jīng)登陸過。小行星，衛(wèi)星和彗星已經(jīng)增加到集郵冊里。除非火星上出現(xiàn)生命，或者出現(xiàn)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 geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will 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 men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond 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(nèi)，即同步軌道。在這層空間里，各種活動的嗡嗡聲將繼續(xù)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36000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(jīng)，褪色很多。

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