【一起闲话英语】太空旅行-Space Travel

 Matthew / England

speaker Well, space travel is very exciting. A very wonderful thing. It's pretty hard to argue that we need space travel if you have people living in poverty in your country. Perhaps we need to have our priorities¹ set first.

 

Lindsay / United States

speaker I don't think the government should pay for space travel. I think there are too many problems here on earth that the government needs to deal first and not look and spend their money on space travel. There's so much disease and and war and education problems and health care problems that the government really needs to focus more on the people that are on earth.

 

Thomas / United States

speaker Space travel is really important. There's two reasons for that. One: we're not being very nice to our world and pretty soon it's gonna reject us, but more importantly, space travel is fun. Why wouldn't we do it?

 

Lori / Canada

speaker Well, I think space travel is really exciting and will be important in the future but I think most important is too look to the problems that we have on our own planet right now so we should resolve things such as environmental issues that we need to deal with before we look beyond our own home.

 

Chris / England

speaker No, I don't think government should invest money in space travel. I think the best way to do it is to show that space travel can be commercially viable² and that the people that are actually leading the way now, in terms of like space travel and space hotels and commercializing space are private industry, so I think that that government should provide support for that and allow them to get some kind of commercial protection on that but I think commercial businesses are the people that are gonna do the best job in that in that sense.

Shalini / Canada

speaker Yes, to some extent. I don't think it should be be a priority³, but I do think it's worthwhile knowing what surrounds us either under water or above the sky. I think they should probably focus on more important matters first, but, yeah, perhaps a little bit of the budget should go towards that.

1 priorities   

n.先( priority的名词复数 )；优先；优先权；优先考虑的事

参考例句：

• The document provided a revealing insight into the government's priorities. 这份文件使人看出政府的轻重缓急是怎样安排的。
• We must work together to fund only our most important priorities. 我们必须共同努力，只为最重要的项目提供资金。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

2 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

3 priority   

n.优先处理的事，居先，优先（权）

参考例句：

• The development of the national economy is a top priority.发展国民经济是应予以最优先考虑的事。
• Things should be taken up in order of priority.办事应有个先后次序。