Week Five- 火箭回收

SpaceX Makes History By Successfully Landing Rocket on Floating Ship

• by 
 
• Clay Dillow

 

• @cwdillow

 APRIL 8, 2016, 5:36 PM EST

SpaceX made history Friday afternoon by successfully landing the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean following the successful launch of a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station.

The first stage rocket booster made a perfect landing on SpaceX’s drone ship, coming to rest upright just meters from dead center on the landing pad.

Today’s landing marks SpaceX’s fifth try at setting down one of its booster stages on its unmanned drone ship—cheekily named Of Course I Still Love You—and the first that didn’t end with the destruction of the rocket. The successful touchdown marks a historic achievement, not only for SpaceX, but for spaceflight in general. The ability to successfully recover and reuse rocket boosters could drastically reduce the high cost of launching people and objects into orbit and beyond.

The company successfully landed one of its Falcon 9 first stage boosters on dry land at Cape Canaveral in December, but having proven its landing systems work and that rocket recovery is indeed feasible, it returned to exclusively attempting the much more challenging drone ship landings. Such drone ship landings are necessary if SpaceX is going to achieve its long-term objective of providing regular and relatively inexpensive space launch services by recovering and reusing its first-stage rocket boosters.

Missions to higher orbits require rockets to travel too fast and too far from their point of origin to make terrestrial landings feasible. It simply requires too much extra fuel to turn the first stage around and pilot it all the way back to its launch site (it’s also safer to land rockets at sea rather than on land, where even a “near miss” could threaten populated areas).

Landing on the drone ship at sea requires the first stage to carry less fuel for its return trip, cutting weight and mission costs. The ability to land at sea consistently would be huge for SpaceX, in theory enabling it to recover the first stages of its Falcon 9 rockets—and the nine costly Merlin rocket engines contained in each one—for virtually any mission regardless of how high and fast the rocket must travel to deliver its payload to the proper orbit.

The launch also marks SpaceX’s first flight to the ISS since a similar mission in June of last year ended abruptly when the rocket disintegrated mid-flight due to a mechanical failure.

Though today’s landing marks a historic milestone for SpaceX, the company has a lot more work ahead of it if it wants to meet its ambitious target of launching 18 rockets this year. Today’s launch marked the just the third launch of 2016, meaning the company has 15 launches to go and a shade less than nine months to complete them.

The rocket launch on Friday placed a SpaceX Dragon capsule on a path to link up with the ISS on Sunday morning carrying a range of experiments and supplies, as well as an experimental inflatable habitat.

http://fortune.com/2016/04/08/spacex-lands-rocket-booster/

Structure of the Lead：

     WHO-SpaceX

     WHEN-Friday afternoon

     WHAT-made history

     WHY-not given

     WHERE-in the Atlantic Ocean

     HOW-by successfully landing the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship

Keywords：

   1. land：著陸、降落

   2. launch：發射

   3. bound：彈回

   4. destruction：毀壞

   5. touchdown：著陸、降落

   6. mission：飛行任務

   7. payload：彈頭

   8. orbit：運行軌道

   9. inflatable：得意的

  10. habitat：棲息地

Week Four- 巴黎氣候高峰會

Kerry Urges Strong Agreement on Climate Change Ahead of Paris Conference

Justin Worland Oct. 18, 2015

    

'Failure is not an option'

Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday urged leaders from around the world to agree to strong measures to address climate change. The speech comes just six weeks before a United Nations conference that diplomats expect to yield the most significant international agreement on the issue ever reached.

In his address, Kerry joined a chorus of climate change advocates who paint the negotiations as an opportunity to transition the world to a low-carbon economy in which investment dollars flow into renewable energy sources and other technology to stem global warming.

“We need every country on the same page, all pushing for an ambitious, durable, and inclusive agreement that will finally put us on the path towards a global clean-energy future,” Kerry said in a speech in Milan. “Failure is not an option.”

Kerry dismissed the notion that climate change can be addressed by future generations, arguing that global security hangs in the balance of the negotiations. Specifically, he pointed the refugee crisis in Syria as a situation that has been exacerbated by climate change. In the future, drought and sea-level rise will have even more dramatic impacts barring action, Kerry said.

 “I’m not telling you that the crisis in Syria was caused by climate change,” he said. “But the devastating drought clearly made a bad situation a lot worse.”

The U.N. conference, which begins next month, has been described as the last opportunity to craft an agreement that will forestall some of the worst effects of climate change. Over the past several months, countries from around the world have submitted plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. An agreement at this year’s conference aims to build upon those commitments and create a structure to monitor and improve upon them.

http://time.com/4077597/kerry-climate-speech/?iid=sr-link8

Structure of the Lead：

     WHO-John Kerry

     WHEN-on Saturday

     WHAT-urged leaders from around the world 

     WHY-to agree to strong measures to address climate change

     WHERE-not given

     HOW-not given

Keywords：

   1. diplomat：外交官

   2. chorus：齊聲、異口同聲

   3. advocate：提倡、主張

   4. transition：轉變

   5. notion：想法

   6. exacerbate：使惡化

   7. drought：乾旱

   8. devastating：毀滅性的

   9. forestall：預先阻止

 10. emission：排放

Week Three- 巴黎恐攻

The Bataclan theater, the epicenter of the terror attacks in Paris

By Ishaan Tharoor   November 13, 2015 

The concert hall was crammed with more than 1,000 people who had come to see a sold-out show by the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. Gunmen apparently burst into the crowd and started firing indiscriminately. At least two attackers were killed. According to reports, they detonated suicide vests as police approached, killing four police officers.

The incident was one in a spate of seemingly coordinated attacks around the city.

The Bataclan, located in the 11th arrondissement in eastern Paris, is a famous venue near an area known for its nightlife. It dates back to the 19th century, when it used to stage vaudeville "spectacles," and played host over the years to luminaries such as Edith Piaf, Nick Cave and Lou Reed. It went through a series of incarnations as a cinema and is now a multi-purpose concert hall. The theater's colorful facade was done in the exotic "chinoiserie" popular at the time of its construction, and once boasted an actual pagoda rooftop.

According to the Guardian, the Bataclan's horseshoe-shaped ground floor can fit seating or be made for standing room.

“It looked like a battlefield, there was blood everywhere, there were bodies everywhere," one survivor told the Guardian after being freed from the Bataclan. "Everyone scrabbled to the ground. I was on the ground with a man on top of me and another one beside me up against a wall. We just stayed still like that. At first we kept quiet. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, it seemed like an eternity."

French President François Hollande called the carnage in the theater and elsewhere an assault "of unprecedented proportions." He then went to the Bataclan to survey the scene.

According to reports, Hollande declared there that France was "going to lead a war," presumably against Islamist militants. He said his country's response would be "ruthless."

Relatives of members in Eagles of Death Metal who spoke to The Washington Post said the band managed to escape.

Mary Lou Dorio, the mother of Julian Dorio, the band's drummer, told The Post that her son was safe. She said the band members fled the concert hall when the attack began, but that the fate of several crew members remains unknown.

“It was awful,” she said. Her son initially went to a local police station, where he was able to call his wife. He had left his phone on stage. Earlier in the day, Dorio posted a far happier photo from his visit to the French capital.

Dorio's wife, Emily, said that she spoke to her husband only briefly.

“We are just holding our breath and saying prayers for everyone,” she told The Post. “He called to say that he loved me and he was safe. Everyone on stage was able to get off.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/13/the-bataclan-theater-the-epicenter-of-the-terror-attack-in-paris/

 Structure of the Lead：

     WHO- Gunmen

     WHEN- not given

     WHAT- burst into the crowd and started firing indiscriminately

     WHY- the concert hall was crammed with more than 1,000 people

     WHERE- inside the concert hall

     HOW- not given 

Keywords：

   1.  indiscriminately：隨意地、任意地

   2. detonate：引爆

   3. coordinated：組織有序的

   4. scrabble：在...上亂趴

   5. eternity：無止盡的漫長

   6. carnage：大屠殺

   7. assault：攻擊、襲擊

   8. unprecedented：史無前例的

   9. presumably：大概 

  10.ruthless：無情的、殘忍的