首页
登录
职称英语
The world’s long romance with speed may finally be ending. Even if Concorde
The world’s long romance with speed may finally be ending. Even if Concorde
游客
2025-04-22
31
管理
问题
The world’s long romance with speed may finally be ending. Even if Concorde (协和式飞机) flies again, its antique nature was revealed as soon as the Paris accident made people scratch their heads and ask quite why these odd aircraft were still flying. Much of the technology that surrounded us has, when we look at it afresh, a Jules Verne quality-solving problems that once seemed important in ways that are ingenious but not necessarily efficient or safe.
The reorientation of science toward the biological and computer frontiers is now an old story, but the 19th century fascination with motive power has retained a powerful hold on our imaginations and our economies. 71.
Advances in motive power were for a long while the main way in which progress and national competition in technology were measured. First at sea, then on the railways, then on the roads, in the air and finally in space, more and more rapid movement was seen as an Carefree good and also, in some vague way, as a key to a fuller understanding of the world.
So intoxicating was this ultimate way in which the growing speed and reach of manmade vehicles could be used that when an unknown rocket enthusiast called Hermann Oberth published his By Rocket To Interplanetary Space in the 1920s, it represented such an escape from the difficulties of the present to the anxious citizens of Weimar Germany (德国魏玛共和国) that it became a bestseller overnight.
72.
For individual sportsmen, pilots and drivers, speed had the status of a privileged substance to which, in those early days, only a minority had full access. Mechanized speed made men, and a few women, into heroes, and it remains a commodity to which males, in particular, are attracted.
The front of the Boys Own annual of half a century ago would typically feature a speeding train in the middle ground, a fast aeroplane above, and a racing car in the foreground.
Disentangling the genuine advantages of speed from its cult aspects has always been a problem, and this was certainly the case in the era in which Concorde was conceived. Land, air and sea speed records had mattered since the 20s in a way inconceivable today. This manic race was run on three tracks-of celebrity sport, of competition between civil industries, and of military development. All three were littered with casualties, whether spectators at Le Mans, Donald Campbell on Coniston Water, or numerous test pilots and astronauts through the years.
Britain was slowing down on all three courses when Concorde came along. Indeed the Concorde project survived in part because, as Harold Wilson explained in his memoirs, the agreement with the French was embodied in an international treaty, and they refused even to consider abandoning or postponing the work. "We had little choice but to go on," the then prime minister concluded.
His lack of enthusiasm suggests that, long before Concorde flew, some those responsible for it knew that it was not going to be a practical aircraft, and also that the technical spin-off would be less than advertised. The reason was that speed was such as dominant consideration that everything else had to take second place. The result was an aircraft that was both ahead of its tie and behind the times, since the era of small-scale luxury air travel was over.
A preoccupation with speed has always gone hand in hand with a preoccupation with safety, the two standards between them providing a way in which advanced states calibrate the state of civilization. Increasing speeds have world lives in constant fear of regression, of losing the scientific and organizational edge that enables it to be both fast and safe. That is one reason why air and sea accidents can attain such mythic status. The disparate treatment of first and third world accidents in the Western press is probably due more to the feeling that accidents are indicators of technical health than to any devaluation of American or Asian lives.
Speed still has its kingdom, but it is shrinking. Its limits have long ago been reached on the roads, and its value in the air, even for manned military aircraft, is diminished- agility and protection are as or more important. 73.
It is still marginally attractive to make trains go faster. The pursuit of physical speed has been replaced by the pursuit of near instantaneity on the Net, an aim which we may in time come to regard just as skeptically.
It is hard to imagine the mood in which David Lean’s The Sound Barrier was made in 1952. breaking that barrier seemed to hold the key to a mystery. But there was no mystery. Man can go faster, but that does not mean it is worth doing so. [br]
选项
答案
动力的发展在—段时间里一直是衡量进步和国家在技术上竞争的主要尺度。最初在海上,接着在铁路上,然后在公路上,后来在天空,最后在太空,越来越快的运动被视为一件无须担忧的好事,而且,越来越快的运动以某种模糊的方式被看成是更充分理解世界的一把钥匙。
解析
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/4048274.html
相关试题推荐
Theworld’slongromancewithspeedmayfinallybeending.EvenifConcorde
Hewas______whenheheardtheunexpectednews,butIfinallyconvincedhim.A、i
Hefinallyagreedtosigntheagreementwithus,butwithsome______.A、recurrenc
FinallythedirtroadinMainewasleadinghome.Thetiretouchedthefirst
FinallythedirtroadinMainewasleadinghome.Thetiretouchedthefirst
FinallythedirtroadinMainewasleadinghome.Thetiretouchedthefirst
FinallythedirtroadinMainewasleadinghome.Thetiretouchedthefirst
Finallythistheoryiswidelyunderstoodandacceptedtheworldover,i.e.ith
Thefirewasfinallybroughtundercontrol,butnot______extensivedamagehadb
Maryfinallydecided______allthejunkshehadkeptinthegarage.A、getridB、go
随机试题
HowtoapproachReadingTestPartOne•InthispartoftheReadingTestyoumat
Thegreatestresultsinlifeareattainedbysimplemeans,andtheexercise
Theamazingsuccessofmanasa(1)_____istheresultoftheevolutionaryde
[originaltext]W:Morning,Mr.Park.M:Comehere,MissLi,Ihavesomethingto
[originaltext]W:Haveyoufoundanythingwrongwithmystomach?M:Notyet.Ia
道路构造中,()设置在面层之下,与面层一起将行车荷载的反复作用传递到下面各层,
( )是最能让幼儿有真实感受的教具,对幼儿发展来说,这是最有价值的与环境互动的
经济基本面的评价因素有哪些( ) I经营业绩 Ⅱ盈利能力 Ⅲ成长性 I
独家委托与普通委托的差异性表现在()。A.业主优先次序 B.销售方式 C
甲公司在面积为10000m2的土地上开发建设一写字楼,建筑覆盖率为45%,总楼层
最新回复
(
0
)