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VOA慢速英语2011--Alan Shepard, 1923-1998: The First Ameri

时间:2011-05-16 01:25:07

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People in America - Alan Shepard, 1923-1998: The First American to Fly in Space

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: I'm Shirley Griffith.
STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program People in America. Each week we tell about someone important in the history of the United States. This week we tell about astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly in space.
MISSION CONTROL: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four three, two, one, zero. Liftoff!"
SHEPARD:"Ah Roger, liftoff and the clock has started."
MISSION CONTROL: [unintelligible]
SHEPARD: “Yes sir, reading you loud and clear. This is Freedom Seven. The fuel is go, one point two g, cabin at 14 psi, oxygen is go!”
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The clock has started. With those words, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. He was in a small spacecraft called Freedom Seven. It was on top of a huge rocket traveling at more than eight thousand kilometers an hour. 
Fifteen minutes later, Freedom Seven came down in the Atlantic Ocean. Alan Shepard was a national hero. He had won an important victory for the United States. The date was May fifth, nineteen sixty-one. The United States and the Soviet1 Union were in a tense competition for world influence. And this competition was reaching even into the cold darkness of space.
STEVE EMBER: In nineteen fifty-seven, the Soviet Union launched the first electronic satellite, Sputnik One. The United States successfully launched its first spacecraft less than four months later. Now the two sides were racing2 to see who could launch the first human space traveler.
On April twelfth, nineteen sixty-one, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew in space for one hundred eight minutes. He circled the Earth once. The Soviets3 again were winning the "space race," but not for long. Three weeks later the United States also put a man into space. He was a thirty-seven-year-old officer in the Navy -- Alan Shepard.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Alan Bartlett Shepard, Junior, was born on November eighteenth, nineteen twenty-three in East Derry, New Hampshire. He graduated from the United States Naval4 Academy in nineteen forty-four. He married soon after his graduation. Then he served for a short time on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War Two.
In nineteen forty-seven, Alan Shepard became a pilot in the Navy. Later he became a test pilot. The life of a test pilot can be very dangerous. It helped prepare Alan Shepard for an even greater danger in the future.
(MUSIC)
STEVE EMBER: The successes that the Soviet Union had with its Sputnik program caused the United States to speed up its plans for a space program. The Americans decided5 to launch a satellite as soon as possible. The first attempt failed. The rocket exploded during launch.
Support was growing, in Congress and among scientists, for a United States civilian6 space agency. Soon, Congress passed a bill creating NASA -- the National Aeronautics7 and Space Administration. President Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
NASA's job was to be scientific space exploration. Its major goal was sending the first Americans into space.
Within three months, the program had a name: Project Mercury8. Mercury was the speedy messenger of the Greek gods. While engineers built the spacecraft, NASA looked for men to fly them.
NASA wanted military test pilots because they test fly new planes. Test pilots are trained to think quickly in dangerous situations. On April seventh, nineteen fifty-nine, the space agency announced the seven Mercury astronauts. They would be the first American space travelers. Alan Shepard was one. The others were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald Slayton.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Nine months after the project started, NASA made its first test flight of the Mercury spacecraft from Cape9 Canaveral, Florida. In the next two years, many other tests followed, all without astronauts.
The final test flight was at the end of January, nineteen sixty-one. It carried a chimpanzee named Ham on a seven-hundred-kilometer flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Several problems developed. But Ham survived the launch and the landing in the ocean. Later, Alan Shepard often was asked how he became the first human American to fly in space. "They ran out of monkeys," he joked.
STEVE EMBER: There were some concerns about the safety of the huge Redstone rocket that was to carry the spacecraft. The launch had been delayed several times while more tests were done. By the time the rocket was ready for launch, Yuri Gagarin had already gone into space for the Soviet Union.
The choice of Alan Shepard to be the first American to fly in space was announced just a few days before the launch. Flights planned for May second and May fourth had to be halted because of bad weather.
On May fifth, nineteen sixty-one, a Friday, Alan Shepard struggled once again into his Mercury capsule. The vehicle was named Freedom Seven. There was almost no room to move. Shepard waited inside for four hours. Weather was partly the cause of the delay. There were clouds that would prevent filming the launch. Also some last-minute repairs had to be made to his radio.
Shepard was tired of waiting. So he told the ground crew to hurry to solve the problems and fire the rocket. Finally, they did.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The rocket slowly began climbing. Millions of radio listeners heard a voice from the Cape Canaveral control room say: "This is it, Alan Shepard, there's no turning back. Good luck from all of us here at the Cape."
The rocket rose higher and higher. For five minutes, Alan Shepard felt the weightlessness of space. He felt himself floating.
Freedom Seven flew one hundred eighty-five kilometers high. Then it re-entered the atmosphere and the spacecraft slowed. The fifteen-minute flight ended with a soft splash10 into the ocean about five hundred kilometers from Cape Canaveral.
Alan Shepard reported: "Everything is A-Okay." A helicopter pulled him from the spacecraft and carried him to a waiting ship.
(MUSIC)
STEVE EMBER: The flight was a complete success. Three weeks later, President John F. Kennedy declared a new goal for the United States. He called for "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the nineteen sixties.
In July of nineteen sixty-nine that goal came true. Alan Shepard was not on that first Apollo moon flight. In fact, he almost never made it to the moon. He developed a disorder11 in his inner-ear.
It kept him from spaceflight for a number of years. Finally, an operation cured his problem. NASA named Shepard to command Apollo Fourteen. The flight was launched at the end of January, nineteen seventy-one. Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell were the other members of the crew.
Roosa orbited the moon while Shepard and Mitchell landed on the surface. They collected rocks and soil. Shepard also did something else. He played golf. He hit two small golf balls.
It was not easy. Shepard was dressed in a big spacesuit. He described his difficulty to Mission Control in Houston.
SHEPARD: “Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency12 sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff13, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here.”
STEVE EMBER: When Shepard did hit the golf balls, they traveled "for miles and miles," as he reported, because the gravity on the moon is one-sixth of the gravity on Earth.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The only humans to walk on the moon were in the Apollo space flight program. Twelve American astronauts walked on the moon between nineteen sixty-nine and nineteen seventy-two. Alan Shepard was the fifth one.
In nineteen seventy-four, he retired14 from NASA and the Navy. Shepard became chairman of a building company in Houston, Texas. Later he began his own company, called Seven Fourteen Enterprises15. It was named for his flights on Freedom Seven and Apollo Fourteen.
He also wrote a book with astronaut Deke Slayton about his experiences. The book is called "Moon Shot." And he led a group raising college money for science and engineering students.
STEVE EMBER: Alan Shepard died on July twenty-first, nineteen ninety-eight after a two-year fight with the blood disease leukemia. He was seventy-four years old. He had been married to his wife, Louise, for fifty-three years.
Alan Shepard was the first American to fly in space. He rode into the sky on rocket fuel and the hopes and dreams of a nation.
He will always be remembered as an American hero because of those fifteen minutes in space.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and produced by Lawan Davis. This is Shirley Griffith.
STEVE EMBER: And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America.


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1 Soviet Sw9wR     
adj.苏联的,苏维埃的;n.苏维埃
参考例句:
  • Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
  • Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。
2 racing 1ksz3w     
n.竞赛,赛马;adj.竞赛用的,赛马用的
参考例句:
  • I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
  • The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。
3 soviets 95fd70e5832647dcf39beb061b21c75e     
苏维埃(Soviet的复数形式)
参考例句:
  • A public challenge could provoke the Soviets to dig in. 公开挑战会促使苏联人一意孤行。
  • The Soviets proposed the withdrawal of American ballistic-missile submarines from forward bases. 苏联人建议把美国的弹道导弹潜艇从前沿基地撤走。
4 naval h1lyU     
adj.海军的,军舰的,船的
参考例句:
  • He took part in a great naval battle.他参加了一次大海战。
  • The harbour is an important naval base.该港是一个重要的海军基地。
5 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
6 civilian uqbzl     
adj.平民的,民用的,民众的
参考例句:
  • There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
  • He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。
7 aeronautics BKVyg     
n.航空术,航空学
参考例句:
  • National Aeronautics and Space undertakings have made great progress.国家的航空航天事业有了很大的发展。
  • He devoted every spare moment to aeronautics.他把他所有多余的时间用在航空学上。
8 mercury NouzIB     
n.汞,水银,水银柱
参考例句:
  • The liquid we can see in thermometers is mercury.我们看到的温度计里的液体是水银。
  • Mercury has a much greater density than water.水银的密度比水大得多。
9 cape ITEy6     
n.海角,岬;披肩,短披风
参考例句:
  • I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
  • She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。
10 splash 5vRwD     
v.溅,泼;n.溅泼声,溅出的水等,斑点
参考例句:
  • I fell into the water with a splash.我跌入水中,激起水花四溅。
  • There's a splash of paint on the white wall.白墙上溅上了一片油漆。
11 disorder Et1x4     
n.紊乱,混乱;骚动,骚乱;疾病,失调
参考例句:
  • When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后,他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
  • It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。
12 contingency vaGyi     
n.意外事件,可能性
参考例句:
  • We should be prepared for any contingency.我们应该对任何应急情况有所准备。
  • A fire in our warehouse was a contingency that we had not expected.库房的一场大火是我们始料未及的。
13 stiff 4G8z4     
adj.严厉的,激烈的,硬的,僵直的,不灵活的
参考例句:
  • There is a sheet of stiff cardboard in the drawer.在那个抽屉里有块硬纸板。
  • You have to push on the handle to turn it,becanse it's very stiff.手柄很不灵活,你必须用力推才能转动它。
14 retired Njhzyv     
adj.隐退的,退休的,退役的
参考例句:
  • The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
  • Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。
15 enterprises 5ed409702167ae63a988a2170c3f8330     
事业( enterprise的名词复数 ); 事业心; 企[事]业单位; 企业发展
参考例句:
  • In capitalist society,big enterprises always try to freeze out the smaller ones. 在资本主义社会,大企业总是千方百计地排挤小企业。
  • Big transcontinental enterprises jostle with one another for world markets. 巨大的跨国公司[企业]互相争夺国际市场。

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