VOA常速英语15--空客新飞机挑战新高度（在线收听）

空客新飞机挑战新高度

Gliders are like engineless aircraft that are towed by powered planes to a certain height. From there, they use natural updrafts, also called mountain waves, to soar to the sky. That is why their wings are so much longer than an ordinary plane’s.

滑翔机没有动力装置，并由飞机拖拽到高空。之后，飞机将利用上升气流飞翔，人们也把他叫作“地形波”。这就是滑翔机机翼要比一般飞机长的原因。

Under the right conditions, experienced pilots can reach very high altitudes and stay aloft for hours.

在正常情况下，资深飞行员能够将飞机飞到很高的高度，并能够持续飞行几小时。

On its first flight, Airbus’ Perlan 2 reached only 1.5 kilometers, but next year they plan to go a lot higher, to an altitude of 27 kilometers higher than the records set by the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

在首秀中，空客公司Perlan 2的飞行高度仅为1.5公里，然而他们计划在明年的飞行中能够飞得更高，能够达到27公里，超过U-2和SR-71侦察机所创造的记录。

We're not a thousand percent sure that the mountain wave will go that high, but all the meteorologists tell us that it does, so we're going to go out and find out.

我们没有十足的把握说，地形波能够让飞机升到这样的高度，但是所有的气象学家都认为会达到，所以我们要试一试。

The goal is to investigate how fast-moving winds blowing at altitudes between 10 and 50 kilometers influence Earth's climate.

我们的目的就是要检测在10-15公里的高空中，强烈气流对地球气候所造成的影响。

It turns out some of the biggest waves in the world，vertical movements exist in the stratosphere. We're going to go and study those waves. Those waves change weather and they change climate, and we are going to study how do they do that.

实验证明许多强气流在平流层产生了垂直运动。我们将要对这些气流进行研究。这些气流改变了天气变化，我们要对原因作出调查。

Stratospheric winds may also influence commercial air traffic as airliners fly higher to reduce the fuel consumption. The air density at those altitudes is similar to the Martian atmosphere, so the Perlan Project may also contribute to the design of aircraft that someday could fly through the skies of the Red Planet.

为了减少油耗，许多客机会上升高度，而平流层气流也会对客机造成影响。这一高度的大气密度近似于火星大气，所以Perlan的这项计划或将帮助设计出能够飞跃火星的飞行器。