Virgin wants to launch a rocket off a 747

原创编译 2018-12-06

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Virgin wants to launch a rocket off a 747
维珍公司计划用波音747飞机发射火箭

Dan Hart: it’s better than launching off of the top of Mount Everest.
丹·哈特：这比在珠穆朗玛峰上发射还要棒。

Rachel Crane: Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart is talking about launching a rocket off a Boeing 747. It’s one of the ways the company is looking to differentiate itself from competitors, who all launch from the ground, in the red hot small satellite launch market. What kind of performance advantage are we talking about?
雷切尔·克兰：维珍轨道公司（维珍集团旗下的航空公司）首席执行官丹·哈特正在谈论从波音747上发射火箭。这是我们公司试图将自己与竞争对手区别开来的一种方式，这些竞争对手都是从地面发射的，在火热的小型卫星发射市场上。我们有什么样的性能优势呢?

Dan Hart: we get somewhere between 10% and 20% improvement by flying on the aircraft. And it also allows us to get above the thick air that you have at sea level. Because we get a performance advantage, we can make the rocket a little bit smaller or make the engines a little bit smaller and less expensive.
丹·哈特：我们将飞机的飞行高度提高了10%到20，这样我们可以冲破海平面上厚厚的大气层上。由于我们有较好的性能，这样我们可以让火箭体积更小一点或者让引擎更小花费更少。

Rachel Crane: the advantages don’t stop there. Virgin Orbit says theoretically, its system can take off from the any commercial airports.
The company 747 Cosmic Girl serves as a flying launch pad for their 70-foot long LauncherOne rocket. At 35000 feet, the two-stage rocket is released from under the wings and ignites, developing customers’ lightweight satellites. The company says each launch will cost customers $10 to $15 million. And Virgin is aiming to be operational by early 2019, having just completed its first test flight. Orbit already has contrast with NASA and other department of Defense.
雷切尔·克兰：我们的优势还不限于此，维珍轨道公司理论上说，整个空中发射系统可以从任何商业机场起飞。
公司将提供波音747“宇宙少女”作为飞行发射台，来发射他们70英尺长的发射火箭“发射者一号”。在35000英尺的高空，两级火箭从机翼下释放并点火，开启客户的轻型卫星。该公司说，每一次发射将花费客户1,000万至1,500万美元。维珍航空的目标是在2019年初投入运营，刚刚完成了首次试飞，轨道公司就已经与美国航天局和其他国防部形成对比。

Dan Hart: most people don’t realize that the satellites are supporting us every day. So a lot of our customers are commercial enterprises who are setting up new applications for communication for tracking ships, for mobile communication.
丹·哈特:大多数人没有意识到卫星与我们的生活息息相关，所以现在我们的很多客户还都是企业，他们正着手建立通讯系统来跟踪船和移动通信。

Rachel Crane: why did you want to get into the small sat space?
雷切尔·克兰：你为什么想进入小型卫星领域?

Richard Branson: it’s very expensive today to put satellite into space. And you have to wait for at least six months a year before you get a slot on a big rocket to get them up there. So we thought, that, if we could take it up to 35000 feet. Drop the rocket and then fire it onto space, we could have a lot of advantages over any competitors.
理查德·布兰森：现代社会把卫星送入太空是非常昂贵的，而且你至少要等六个月才能在一个大火箭上得到一个位置，把卫星送到太空，所以我们想，如果我们能把它带到35000英尺的高空，然后发射火箭到太空，我们可以比任何竞争对手都更有优势。

Rachel Crane: Kelly Latimer pilots Virgin Orbit for 747 Cosmic Girl, a retrofitted Virgin passenger airplane.
雷切尔·克兰：维珍轨道公司首席飞行员凯利·拉蒂默驾驶着改装过的波音747“宇宙少女”进行了首飞。

Rachel Crane: This is not look like a typical 747. Why is it completely a stripped inside?
雷切尔·克兰：这看起来不像是典型的波音747。为什么里面是完全空着的?

Kelly Latimer: part of that was just to get rid of the extra weight that total weight we took out is about 50000 pounds. And the weight of the rocket is going to be 58000 pounds.
凯利·拉蒂默：为了除掉多余的重量，我们减去的总重大约是50000磅，而火箭的重量是58000磅。

Rachel Crane: it kind of evens out. So it kind of lets us
雷切尔·克兰：有点扯平了，所以它让我们……
Kelly Latimer: Yeah, put a rocket without really eating the weight increase.
凯利·拉蒂默：对，火箭在上面的时候不要有增重的东西。

Rachel Crane: Latimer performed the first captive carry flight if its LauncherOne rocket, but says she’s really excited for the company’s next major milestone---its first orbital flight.
雷切尔·克兰：拉蒂默进行了第一次运载火箭的首次试飞，但她说，对公司来说，发射者一号将是下一个重大里程碑——完成了首次轨道飞行——她对此感到非常兴奋。

Kelly Latimer: I look forward to the day where the actual rocket has got the fuel on board and we’re going to just go up there drop it, and see it, you know, go off in front of us.
凯利·拉蒂默：我期待着有一天真正的火箭把燃料装到飞船上，我们就上去把它发射出去，然后看到它在我们面前爆炸。

Rachel Crane: While Virgin Orbit inches closer to that milestone, competitor Rocket Lab recently launched six satellites into low Earth orbit. Rocket Lab says it hopes to complete 16 launches next year, a number Virgin Orbit would like to top.
雷切尔·克兰：虽然维珍轨道离这一里程碑仅一步之遥，但竞争对手火箭实验室(Rocket Lab)最近向近地轨道发射了6颗卫星。火箭实验室说，他们希望明年完成16次发射，这个数字是维珍轨道公司希望达到的最高目标。

Dan Hart: we expect to be launching 20, 30, maybe more times a year. I could easily see us doing missions much further than low Earth orbit going to geo, going to lunar, going to Mars.
丹·哈特:我们预计每年发射20、30次，甚至更多，很容易看到我们所完成的远不止与近地轨道同步运行，我们还可以去月球，去火星。

Richard Branson: the demand, I think, for small satellites around the earth is enormous. There’re about 4 billion people that are not connected. They all want to be connected.
理查德·布兰森：我认为，人们对地球上小型卫星的需求是巨大的，现在大约仍有40亿人没有联网，他们都想互相联系的。

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