評論
打印
Let's take a snapshot at aviation. And there was a wonderful little short four-year time period when marvelous things happened.
讓我們迅速回覽一下航空工業。曾有四年短暫的美好時期，那時發生了許多奇跡。
It started in 1908, when the Wright brothers flew in Paris, and everybody said, "Ooh, hey, I can do that."
那段時期開始于1908年，當懷特兄弟在巴黎飛行，每個人都說，“哦，嘿！我能做這個。”
There's only a few people that have flown in early 1908. In four years, 39 countries had hundreds of airplanes, thousand of pilots.
只有極少的人曾飛過，在1908年初。四年里，39個國家有了上百架飛機，上千名飛行員。
Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today,
飛機通過自然選擇被發明了出來。現在你可以說聰明的設計設計了我們今天的飛機，
but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes.
但沒有聰明的設計真正設計了那些早期的飛機。
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種不同的嘗試，如果飛行器墜毀，飛行員身亡，就不再嘗試此種飛行器。
The ones that flew and landed OK because there were no trained pilots who had good flying qualities by definition.
能夠飛行和著陸的就是好的，因為沒有訓練有素的飛行員，沒有真正有好的飛行素質之人。
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.
所以我們，通過做一大堆嘗試，幾千次的嘗試，在那四年里，我們發明了我們今天飛行所用的飛機。
And that's why they're so safe, as we gave it a lot of chance to find what's good.
這就是為什么我們這么安全，因為我們給了自己很多機會去發現什么是好的。
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.
在宇宙飛行領域，我們沒有給自己一點兒機會。只嘗試了兩個想法--美國嘗試了兩個，俄羅斯嘗試了一個。
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，在這段時期，誰被鼓舞了？《航空周刊》讓我列一個表，列出我認為這一百年的航空事業的推動者。
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.
我把他們寫了出來，之后發現他們每一個人在航天事業的奇妙復興之時都是小孩子。
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，當我小的時候發生了什么-- 也是非常重大的事件。噴氣式飛機時代開始了，導彈時代開始了。
Von Braun was on there showing how to go to Mars -- and this was before Sputnik.
馮·布勞恩在那里展示如何登上火星 -- 這些事早于人造地球衛星的制造。
And this was at a time when Mars was a hell of a lot more interesting than it is now.
那時火星是一個非常令人感興趣的地方，比現在有趣得多。
We thought there'd be animals there; we knew there were plants there; the colors change, right?
我們曾以為那里有動物存在，我們知道那里有植物，有色彩變幻，不是嗎？
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，美國國家宇航局搞砸了這事情，因為他們派遣了這些機器人，而他們只著陸在了沙漠里。
