美国有线新闻 CNN 马斯克将小说《银河帝国》送上了猎鹰号（在线收听）

SpaceX is about to make the ground seriously crumble. The new rocket, the Falcon Heavy, is about to launch for the first time and this thing is big. It’s lifting from the historic Kennedy Center launch pad 39A, which is where Apollo 11 launched humans to the moon, and once again, the pad will be the site of space flight history.

太空探索技术公司(SpaceX)即将会让大地为之颤抖。新火箭“猎鹰号”将首次发射，这是一件大事。它从历史上著名的肯尼迪中心39A发射台升空，那里是阿波罗11号将人类送入月球的地方，再一次，发射台将成为太空飞行历史的地点。

Once Falcon Heavy has lift off, SpaceX says it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.

一旦“猎鹰重型”升空，SpaceX公司表示，这将是世界上最强大的作战火箭，其威力将是目前的两倍。

The rocket is powered by 27 engines and SpaceX says when all engines are at full throttle, the rocket has 5 million pounds of thrust, which is the equivalent of 18 747s. The going cost for a launch, according to the company, $90 million. But that’s just a fraction of what a launch would cost with the SLS, the heavy lift rocket that the government has been working on for years.

火箭由27个引擎提供动力。SpaceX称，当所有引擎都处于全速运转时，火箭的推力为500万磅，相当于18747s。据该公司称，目前的发射成本为9000万美元。但这只是政府多年来一直致力于的重型运载火箭发射成本的一小部分。

Now, the Falcon Heavy is basically three of the company’s Falcon IX rockets, which they’ve been launching since 2010, strapped together.

现在，“猎鹰重型”基本上是该公司的“猎鹰9号”(Falcon IX)火箭中的三枚，他们自2010年以来就一直把它们一起发射。

Originally, the company had thought that putting together three of these tried and true rockets would be relatively easy rocket science, but it turns out it was much more complicated than Elon Musk and his team had anticipated, and the launch has been delayed for several years. And even though the rocket is expected to finally take flight, Musk himself acknowledges that this first test launch has a high likelihood of failure.

：最初，该公司认为，将三枚试验过的、真正的火箭组装在一起，相对来说是一项简单的火箭科学，但事实证明，这比埃隆?马斯克(Elon Musk)和他的团队所预期的要复杂得多，而且发射被推迟了好几年。尽管火箭预计将最终升空，但马斯克本人也承认，第一次试飞失败的可能性很大。

So, when you’re launching the rocket that everybody has been waiting years for and has a good shot of just blowing up -- well, if you’re Musk, master of PR, you go big and you launch your own car. Yet, the rocket’s payload will be Musk’s own cherry red Tesla roadster and it will be playing David Bowie’s "Space Oddity" on repeat.

所以，你发射火箭的时刻每个人都已经等了好几年了，并且有一个很好的爆炸的机会——嗯，如果你是马斯克，公关大师，你就会抓住机会。然而，火箭的有效载荷将是红色的特斯拉跑车，它将在重复播放大卫·鲍伊的“太空怪”。

The intended destination: Mars orbit, that is if it doesn’t blow up on ascent. And while sending a Tesla to space might be a silly PR stunt, the launch is anything but. The rocket was designed from the start to ferry people to the moon and to Mars. A successful launch would put SpaceX, a giant lip forward, towards getting to deep space. Oh, and did I mention that SpaceX is hoping to land all three first stage boosters? Yes, that’s also happening.

如果火箭发射顺利，则目标是:火星轨道。虽然把特斯拉送到太空可能是一种愚蠢的公关噱头，但这次发射绝非易事。这枚火箭从一开始就被设计用来将人们运送到月球和火星。如果发射成功，太空探索技术公司(SpaceX)——一个巨大的“跨越”——将朝着进入太空的方向前进。哦，我有没有提到SpaceX公司希望把所有三个一级推进器都着陆?是的,这一切正在发生。