跟读练习: 1,000km Cable to the Stars - The Skyhook - 通过视频学习英语口语

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Getting to space is hard.
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Right now, it's like going up a mountain on a unicycle with a backpack full of explosives.
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Incredibly slow, you can't transport a lot of stuff, and you might die.
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A rocket needs to reach a velocity of about 40,000 km an hour to escape from Earth.
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To get to that speed, rockets are mostly containers for fuel with a tiny tip of payload.
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This is bad if you want to go to other planets, because you need a lot of heavy stuff if you want to survive and maybe even come back.
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So is there a way to get to space with less fuel and more payload?
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A nice thing that solved most of our transport problems on Earth is what you call infrastructure infrastructure.
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Whether it's roads for cars, ports for ships or rails for trains, we've made it easier to get to places.
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We can apply the same solution to space travel.
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Space infrastructure will make getting into orbit and out to the moon, Mars and beyond easier and cheaper.
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Great, but what exactly is space infrastructure?
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Unlike an Earth space elevator which is currently science fiction, there is a simple yet promising technology that does not require new science,
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magic materials or huge investments and that has been tested successfully in orbit already.
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A cable and a weight, known as a tether.
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The concept is so simple, it's surprising.
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What if we put tethers, hundreds or thousands of kilometers long, into space and had spacecraft use them as ladders to climb to higher altitudes and gain speed.
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This concept is known as the skyhook.
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It works even better if we make it spin.
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A counterweight holds a long cable in place while it rotates around a circle.
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A rotating tether slows down its tip relative to the ground at the bottom
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and speeds it up at the top like a catapult.
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This means that you can transfer energy from the tether and get a massive boost when released, more or less for free, equal to twice the tether's rotation velocity.
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Specialized fibers already exist that can survive the extraordinary stresses a skyhook would be faced with.
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To protect against cuts and collisions from debris and meteorites, we can thread our tether into a web of redundant fibers.
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Since our skyhook would pass over the same spot many times a day, this would allow small, reusable shuttles to catch up with it.
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Of course, it's not that easy.
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At its lowest point, the tether's tip is dashing through the atmosphere at around 12,000 km per hour.
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Because of Earth's atmosphere, we can't lower the skyhook too much, or it will get too hot from air friction.
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So it will dip to a height of 80 to 150 km and no lower.
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To match this, we'll need specialized spacecraft that can get to the tether.
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While this isn't exactly easy, it's still much cheaper than getting a big tin can filled with rocket fuel to go 40,000 km an hour.
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Catching the tip will be a challenge too.
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There's only a short time window of 60 to 90 seconds
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to find a tiny thing in the sky moving at Mark 12.
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To make this easier, the tip could have a sort of fishing line, a kilometer long, with a navigation drone that helps the spacecraft connect to connect.
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Another challenge is keeping our skyhook in orbit.
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As more and more ships latch onto it and pull themselves up, they use up the momentum that keeps it in place.
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If we don't do anything, it will slow down and crash into the atmosphere.
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And here, we can cheat the universe a bit.
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The Skyhook is a battery of orbital energy.
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It's possible to balance the payloads coming in and being sent off.
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Arriving ships bringing humans and materials home to Earth home to Earth, add energy to the tether, which it can give to other ships departing into space.
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This way the tether doesn't lose any energy.
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The more we use it, the cheaper it gets.
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If we're still losing energy with each boost, we can recover it with small electric or chemical engines that regularly correct the tether's position.
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A set of tethers, one around Earth and one around Mars, could make trips between the planets fast, straightforward and low cost compared to rockets.
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The Earth Tether would sit in low Earth orbit to grab people and payloads and fling them off to Mars.
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The Mars Tether catches them and slows them down for a landing on the surface.
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In the opposite direction, the Tether could pick up a vehicle traveling through Mars' thin atmosphere at only about 1,000 km an hour, not much faster than our airliners on Earth,
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and fling it back to Earth to be caught and lowered down.
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The Tethers could shorten trips between both planets from 9 months down to 5 or even 3,
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and reduce the scale of the rockets required by between 84 and 96%.
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Even better, people may be able to travel in relative luxury, as we could afford to invest in passenger comfort.
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Tether travel would be first-class seats to Mars.
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Together, tethers around Earth and Mars could provide the rapid and cost-efficient transportation backbone that would make space travel affordable.
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But let's go further.
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Starting from low Mars orbit, a tether could boost ships to the asteroid belt.
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The first craft sent to a new asteroid would need rockets to slow down at its destination.
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Subsequent arrivals might find a tether waiting to catch them and send them back for free.
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Getting to asteroids cheaply is a major factor in opening up the resources of the solar system.
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Precious metals and valuable minerals could be delivered to Mars just weeks after they were cut out of their asteroid.
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They would be the perfect building blocks for our interplanetary civilization.
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But why stop here?
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Mars moons are very convenient.
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No other moons in the solar system orbit that close to their planet.
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Phobos is so heavy that we don't need to worry about slowing it down, making it the perfect attachment point for supertethers just under 6,000 kilometers long.
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The lower tip would fly just over the surface of Mars and be very easy to catch.
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The upper tip can fling ships all the way to Jupiter and Saturn.
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The same super tether can also bring the inner solar system closer.
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Venus and Mercury are a single swing away.
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Unlike Mars, they are bursting with solar energy and are rich in minerals.
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In the long term, nothing is stopping humanity from constructing a zero-propellant transport network for the terrestrial planets, planets centered on the Martian moons.
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Tethers are a comparably cheap and sustainable solution to making space travel affordable
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and the rest of the solar system accessible for exploitation and exploration.
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Considering that we have the technology to build them today, there's really no good excuse to wait any longer.
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Parts of the solar system are far away, but they could be very close.

关于本课程

在本课程中，学习者将通过深入探讨“天空钩”这一概念，提升英语口语能力。我们将关注与太空旅行相关的技术和挑战，帮助学习者熟悉与科学、工程相关的词汇和短语。通过观看视频并重点练习，学习者将能够增强其在专业领域中的表达能力，进而掌握更复杂的英语结构和流利度。

关键词汇与短语

  • 太空基础设施 (Space Infrastructure)
  • 天空钩 (Skyhook)
  • 缆绳 (Tether)
  • 飞船 (Spacecraft)
  • 轨道能量 (Orbital Energy)
  • 导航无人机 (Navigation Drone)
  • 大气摩擦 (Atmospheric Friction)

练习技巧

在观看视频时，请注意以下几点，以便更好地进行shadow speech训练和shadowspeak的练习：

  • 首先，设定一个舒适的播放速度，适合你的听力水平，这样你可以更容易跟上说话者的节奏。
  • 尴尬时可以暂停视频，重复说每一句。会让你感觉更自然，帮助你在口语交流中获得自信。
  • 注意说话者的语调和重音，这有助于提升你的英语口语练习的流利性和表达力。
  • 尽量模仿说话者的情感和语气，这样会使你的英语变得更加生动有趣，尤其是在讨论复杂话题时。
  • 所选段落应尽量在1-2分钟内，方便重复练习，确保能有效消化视频中的信息和表达。

使用看YouTube学英语的方式来提升你的英语口语能力，与他人共享你随之提升的内容，也许会激励更多人一起参与英语学习旅程！

什么是跟读法？

跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。