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Quickening the countdown

加速倒计时

英文部分选自经济学人191207science and technology版块

Warfare in space

太空战

Quickening the countdown

加速倒计时

Growing fears of conflict in space mean America’s officials are seeking faster ways to launch satellites

美国对太空冲突的恐惧与日俱增，正在寻求更快的方式发射军事卫星。

By shooting a missile into one of its own satellites in March, India upped the ante. The immediate intention, suggests Jeffrey Caton, a retired American air-force colonel who teaches at the Army War College, was to fire “a shot across the bow” of India’s rival China. The Chinese had, after all, blown up one of their own satellites in 2007, in a similar demonstration of their ability to do such things. India’s test, along with the wider profusion of anti-satellite weapons, has lent credence to the worries of defence chiefs around the world who believe that future conflicts between great powers will stretch into space.

2019年3月，印度发射了一枚（反卫星）导弹，击中并摧毁了自己的一颗卫星，此举加剧了太空备战的紧张气氛。任教于美国陆军战争学院的退役美国空军上校杰弗里•卡顿（Jeffrey Caton）称，印度此举最直接的用意是警告竞争对手中国。毕竟中国在2007年就打掉了一颗自己发射的卫星，为的也是彰显自己的实力。印度的试验以及种类繁多的反卫星武器，让全世界的国防部长感到焦虑，他们相信，未来大国之间的冲突将扩展到太空。

注：
A shot across the bow: A warning that negative consequences will be faced if something is carried out or allowed to continue.警告选自wiktionary

Satellites are too militarily useful to pretend that adversaries will consider them off-limits, says William Roper, the air force’s assistant secretary for technology and acquisitions. America must therefore ready itself for warfare in space. America is, indeed, especially vulnerable. It has more space assets than any other country and relies on them more for its war-fighting capability. Moreover, as John Hyten, the vice-chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, eloquently puts it, America’s kit in space consists mainly of large, “exquisite” satellites that make for “big, fat, juicy targets”.

美国空军负责技术和采购的助理事务卿威廉•罗珀（William Roper）称，人造卫星对于军事战争意义重大，因此没有一个大国会对敌国的发展置若罔闻。因此，美国必须做好应对太空战争的准备。事实上，美国的确也特别容易遭受攻击，其拥有的太空资产多于其他任何国家，并且也更加的依赖这些资产实现其作战能力。此外，正如美国参谋长联席会议副主席约翰•海腾（John Hyten）也不遗余力地宣称：美国的太空装备主要是大型而“精致”的卫星，而（对于对手而言）成为一个极大而且非常容易攻击的目标。

First responders

初步应对

One approach to reducing the risk this poses is to make those targets less fat and juicy. That is happening, as both civil and military satellite users shrink their hardware and scatter its functions over multiple pieces of equipment. In particular, people are deploying more of the modular designs known as cubesats. Among other things, that means individual satellites are smaller and cheaper, and therefore easier to stockpile in advance. But for this approach to be really useful, it must also be possible to launch them quickly if, for whatever reason (whether enemy action or otherwise), an orbiting asset stops working and needs replacing.

降低此类风险的一个方法是缩小目标体积，使其不易被攻击。民用和军用卫星用户正在缩小硬件体积，并将卫星的功能分散到多个设备上。具体来说，人们正在更多地采用被称为“立方星”的模块化设计。这种设计意味着单颗卫星的体积更小，造价更低等等，从而更易于提前储备。但是，要让这一方法真正奏效，就必须在在轨卫星停止工作或者需要更换的时候，能够实现快速的发射替换卫星（不管卫星失效是由于敌方攻击还是其他原因）。

That concept is known as “responsive space”, and, in today’s outsourced world, it often means calling on the private sector to do the actual launching. American officials are therefore pleased that a firm called Rocket Lab, whose services they often rely on for lifting payloads of up to 150kg, has quickened the tempo of cubesat launches from its pad in New Zealand to once a month. Rocket Lab hopes that, by early next year, it will have improved this rate to once a fortnight—an objective which will be assisted by its construction of a second launch pad in Virginia.

这个概念就叫作“太空应急响应”，而在当下业务外包盛行的情况下，“太空应急响应”常常意味着由私营部门负责具体的发射工作。因此，当一家名为“火箭实验室”（Rocket Lab）的公司(有效载荷可达150公斤)利用其位于新西兰的发射场，将“立方星”的发射频率提高到一个月一次时，美国官员感到很欣慰。公司希望，到明年年初，在位于弗吉尼亚州的第二座发射场建成后，“立方星”的发射频率能提高到两周一次。

Rocket Lab is also a pioneer of the 3d printing of rocket parts, such as the nozzles, valves, pumps and main combustion chamber of the motor. That reduces the number of components involved, and greatly speeds up manufacture and assembly. Rockets being expensive, no one wants to carry a large inventory of them. Having a “just in time” approach to launcher availability is therefore desirable.

Rocket Lab 公司在火箭零部件3d打印领域也走在了前列，能打印的零部件包括喷嘴、阀门、泵和发动机的主燃烧室。3D打印减少了所涉及的零部件数量，并大大加快了制造和组装速度。火箭价格昂贵，没有人会储存大量火箭零部件。因此，这个与发射能力相对应的“想射就射”方法很受欢迎。

Relativity Space, another American firm, also plans to print its rocket, the Terran 1. This will carry a payload of 900kg. Its first orbital launch is scheduled for next year. Relativity Space’s biggest printers produce five-metre sections of propellant tank. Its most precise ones create engine parts with an accuracy of 40 millionths of a metre. A conventionally manufactured rocket of similar size would contain, the firm says, nearly 100,000 parts. Terran 1 has less than 1,000. That simplifies the supply chain and accelerates the testing of parts.

另一家名为“Relativity Space”（相对论太空）的美国公司也计划3D打印“地球人1号”（Terran 1），它的设计有效载荷高达900公斤。Terran 1的第一次轨道发射定于明年。Relativity Space公司最大的打印机可生产五米长的推进剂箱，最高精度的打印机打印出来的引擎零件精度可达四千万分之一米，即误差不超过这一数值。该公司称，一枚按传统方法制造的类似尺寸的火箭包含近10万个零件，而Terran 1只有不到1000个。这不仅简化了供应链，还缩短了零部件的测试周期。

Bright ideas

出色的想法

Speeding up launcher production in this way helps. But it will not be enough if America is to fulfill its goal of launching replacement satellites with a day’s notice. That is one reason, says Mr Roper, why the air force is now buying, at a series of pitching events that started in March, ideas for ways of prevailing in “high end” orbital combat. Encouragingly for proposers of such ideas, little bureaucracy is involved. Settlement for those accepted is immediate—the air force sidesteps its lumbering payments system by using official credit cards to transfer money instantly to people’s PayPal accounts. Those who present clever proposals can thus pocket awards exceeding $100,000 within minutes. The latest of these pitching meetings, on November 5th and 6th, resulted in on-the-spot contracts worth $22.5m.

虽然以这种方式加快发射器生产会发挥一定的作用，但是，如果美国要完成在只提前一天通知的情况下发射替代卫星的目标，这还远远不够。罗珀先生说，这就是为什么空军在三月份以来开展的一系列招标活动中，购买可以助其在精锐轨道战中胜出的技术。让这些提案者感到鼓舞的是，这个过程中官僚主义影响很小。提议被采纳后的资金结算也是非常迅速——空军绕过了反应缓慢的支付系统，转而通过使用官方信用卡将钱立即转移到接受人的PayPal账户。因此，那些提出有效建议的人可以凭借这种方式在短短几分钟内获得超过10万美元的奖金。例如， 11月5日和6日举行的最新一次招标会议中现场就签订了价值2250万美元的合同。

注：
Pitching event： event where a selected group of startups make presentations to an audience, often with a panel of judges.

Meanwhile darpa, America’s main military-research organisation, is trying to organise a responsive-space competition of its own responsive-space. Next year it hopes to hold a challenge in which teams will attempt launches twice in a matter of days or weeks, each time learning only shortly beforehand of the mission’s location, destination orbit and payload characteristics. This has never been done before. Programming the computers takes time, and the rocket must be trimmed in advance for the particular trajectory, taking into account such factors as the weather. Prizes of up to $10m will be awarded.

与此同时，美国主要的军事研究中心DARPA（美国国防高级研究计划局）正筹备为自己的太空应急响应计划组织一场“太空应急响应比赛”。它们希望在明年举办挑战赛，要求参赛团队能在几天或几周内进行两次发射，并且每次发射的地点、目标轨道和有效荷载参数都只会提前很短时间内告知。这可是史无前例的事。电脑编程需要时间，根据不同的影响因素例如天气等，卫星也必须提前调整以符合发射轨迹要求。胜出团队将获得高达1千万美元的奖金。

It is a measure of the task’s difficulty that, of the 55 teams which signed up initially, only three qualified, and two have subsequently dropped out. The name of the remaining competitor is secret. At least one of the dropouts has not given up completely, though. That firm, Virgin Orbit, has turned a Boeing 747-400 into a flying launch pad. At an altitude of about 10.7km, the aircraft releases a rocket called LauncherOne. This rocket’s engine ignites after 4.8 seconds of freefall.

赛事任务十分艰巨，最初报名的55支队伍中，只有3支达标，而其中2支队伍后来退出了比赛。最后留下来的参赛队伍名字尚未公开。但至少有一支退赛队伍并未完全放弃。这个名为维珍轨道（Virgin Orbit）的公司将波音747-400改装成为卫星运载机，在海拔10.7千米高度，发射了一枚名为LauncherOne的（模拟）火箭。该火箭的发动机在自由落体4.8秒后燃烧（最终按计划坠落在位于莫哈韦沙漠的预定空降场）

注：

Virgin One采用的是由飞机将火箭载运到高空，再由高空发射的技术。该技术的优点包括更节省火箭燃料和成本、发射较不受天气干扰、可以更容易低直接发射到轨道等。该次的火箭坠落测试是为了确保飞机与火箭两者的气流不会互相干扰，测试成功。

Such launches, Virgin Orbit says, can take place above nasty weather. They also make it easier to reach east-to-west “retrograde” orbits, because the launching plane can fly in the opposite direction to Earth’s spin, reducing the launch velocity required for such an orbit. Though Virgin Orbit’s system has yet to put a satellite into orbit, Britain’s Royal Air Force seems interested. In July it announced a deal to launch small satellites on notices possibly as short as a week. By today’s standards, that is, indeed, pretty responsive.

维珍轨道公司称这样的卫星发射即使在恶劣的天气也可以进行，而且因运载机可往地球（由西向东）自转的反方向飞行，因此更易助卫星进入东西逆行轨道、降低了所需的卫星发射到轨道的速度。虽然维珍轨道的系统尚未成功发射卫星进入轨道，但英国皇家空军对它充满兴趣。他们在七月宣布了与维珍轨道公司的合作-----力争在提前一周告知的情况下发射小型卫星。在现今的标准看来，这的确是非常快速的反应了（双意：一指接到通知短期内就发射卫星，是responsive space快速响应空间技术；二指英国皇家空军对新技术反应）

翻译组：

Cindy ，女，未来外贸工，TE粉

Frank，男，小硕，经济学人的死侍

Nikolai，子承父业，蛋糕厂员工，AKB49

Piggy，爱吃鱼，爱跳舞，爱睡回笼觉的小能猫，NUS食品系

校核组：

Angela，女，double major 哲学数学

Lee ，爱骑行的妇女之友，Timberland粉

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

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