TED演讲之伟大预言 伯特·鲁坦: 预见太空未来(2)
Let’s take a snapshot at aviation. And there was a wonderful little short four-year time period when marvelous things happened.
让我们迅速回览一下航空工业。曾有四年短暂的美好时期，那时发生了许多奇迹。
It started in 1908, when the Wright brothers flew in Paris, and everybody said, “Ooh, hey, I can do that.”
那段时期开始于1908年，当怀特兄弟在巴黎飞行，每个人都说，“哦，嘿！我能做这个。”
There’s only a few people that have flown in early 1908. In four years, 39 countries had hundreds of airplanes, thousand of pilots.
只有极少的人曾飞过，在1908年初。四年里，39个国家有了上百架飞机，上千名飞行员。
Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today,
飞机通过自然选择被发明了出来。现在你可以说聪明的设计设计了我们今天的飞机，
but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes.
但没有聪明的设计真正设计了那些早期的飞机。
There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don’t try that again.
可能至少有3000种不同的尝试，如果飞行器坠毁，飞行员身亡，就不再尝试此种飞行器。
The ones that flew and landed OK because there were no trained pilots who had good flying qualities by definition.
能够飞行和着陆的就是好的，因为没有训练有素的飞行员，没有真正有好的飞行素质之人。
So we, by making a whole bunch of attempts, thousands of attempts, in that four-year time period, we invented the concepts of the airplanes that we fly today.
所以我们，通过做一大堆尝试，几千次的尝试，在那四年里，我们发明了我们今天飞行所用的飞机。
And that’s why they’re so safe, as we gave it a lot of chance to find what’s good.
这就是为什么我们这么安全，因为我们给了自己很多机会去发现什么是好的。
That has not happened at all in space flying. There’s only been two concepts tried — two by the U.S. and one by the Russians.
在宇宙飞行领域，我们没有给自己一点儿机会。只尝试了两个想法–美国尝试了两个，俄罗斯尝试了一个。
Well, who was inspired during that time period? Aviation Week asked me to make a list of who I thought were the movers and shakers of the first 100 years of aviation.
那么，在这段时期，谁被鼓舞了？《航空周刊》让我列一个表，列出我认为这一百年的航空事业的推动者。
And I wrote them down and I found out later that every one of them was a little kid in that wonderful renaissance of aviation.
我把他们写了出来，之后发现他们每一个人在航天事业的奇妙复兴之时都是小孩子。
Well, what happened when I was a little kid was — some pretty heavy stuff too. The jet age started: the missile age started.
那么，当我小的时候发生了什么– 也是非常重大的事件。喷气式飞机时代开始了，导弹时代开始了。
Von Braun was on there showing how to go to Mars — and this was before Sputnik.
冯·布劳恩在那里展示如何登上火星 — 这些事早于人造地球卫星的制造。
And this was at a time when Mars was a hell of a lot more interesting than it is now.
那时火星是一个非常令人感兴趣的地方，比现在有趣得多。
We thought there’d be animals there; we knew there were plants there; the colors change, right?
我们曾以为那里有动物存在，我们知道那里有植物，有色彩变幻，不是吗？
But, you know, NASA screwed that up because they’ve sent these robots and they’ve landed it only in the deserts.
但是，你知道，美国国家宇航局搞砸了这事情，因为他们派遣了这些机器人，而他们只着陆在了沙漠里。
演讲简介：
在这篇热情洋溢的演讲中，传奇的宇宙飞船设计者伯特·鲁坦鞭笞美国停滞政府资助的空间探索项目，并呼吁企业家重拾这个美国国家宇航局中断的项目。