1. Q. There's a lot of talk about putting up manned orbital stations. What does this mean, concretely?
问：许多人都在谈论建立载人轨道太空站，具体说是什么意思呢？
2. A. It is very important to have scientific stations in space. A space telescope with a mirror slightly over six and a half feet in diam eter will be placed in orbit, and there will be more and more of these. A few years ago, our group at Saclay, in collaboration with a number of other European Laboratories orbited a telescope that revolutionized our knowledge of gamma-ray emissions by celestial objects.答：在
答：在太空建立科学考察站是非常重要的。一架镜面直径略大于６.5英尺的太空望远镜将被送入轨道，而且还会有愈来愈多的这类望远镜被送进太空。几年前，我们小组在萨克莱与许多欧洲实验室合作，把一架望远镜送入了轨道，这架望远镜在根本上改变了我们对天体所发射的Y射线的了解。
3. Life aboard manned space stations won't be as exciting as we might suppose. It will probably be comparable to the life people lead aboard deep-sea oil rigs.
在载入太空站的生活并不像我产想象的那般令人兴奋，这种生活大概和人们在深海石油井平台上过的生活差不多。
4. Q. What scientific interest will these stations offer?
问：这些太空站能够提供哪些令人感兴趣的科学研究呢？
5. A. Observation is much more precise beyond the atmosphere, because the sky is darker. You see many more stars and objects that are concealed by the earth's luminescence.
答：由于太空更黑暗，在大气层之外的观察结果要精确得多。你能看见多得多的恒星和其他天体，这些恒星和天体平时都被地球光挡住了。
6. Q What objects?
问：什么天体？
7. A. We know pretty well how stars are born because we can observe them. Two or three new stars appear in our galaxy every year. But nearly all the galaxies were born at the same time, when the universe was constituted 15 billion (light) years ago. No new ones are thought to exist.
答：我们确切知道恒星是怎样诞生的，因为我们能看见它们。在我们的星系中，每年都会诞生两到三个新恒星。但所有的星系几乎都是同时在150亿光年前宇宙形成时诞生的，我们认为 存在新的星系。
8.To observe the birth of a galaxy that happened so long ago, you have to see a very long way. At present we can go back 10 to 12 billion years. We have to go a bit farther back still, and maybe catch them in the act of birth. Objects that distant are necessarily very dim, so ideal conditins are needed to observe them. Orbital stations provide such conditions.
要想观察很久很久以前一个星系的形成情况，人们必须得要看到很远很远的距离。现在我们可以看到100亿光年至120亿光年远的星系，但我们还得看得再远一些，这样就可能捕获到星系形成时的实况。那么远的物体看上去必然是模糊的，所以就需要有一种理想的位置去观测它们。太空轨道站就能够提供这种理想的观测点。
9. Q Would orbital stations be choice places from which to try to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligences?
问：太空轨道站也会是设法与地球大气层以外的信息进行通讯的理想场所吗？
10. A. Not particularly through radio communication, except on certain wave lengths that are absorbed by the atmosphere. But as points of departure for exploration they'll be very useful.
答：除非用某些能被大气层吸收的无线电波段，否则在太空轨道站用无线电进行通讯并不怎么特别合适。但作为探险活动从那里出发倒是非常合适的。
11.Q How far would such exploration go?
问：从那儿出发探险范围能有多大？
12. A In 1989 the satelite Voyager II will reach Neptune after a journey of three and a half years. In addition, five probes were sent to rendezous with Halley's comet. So exploration of the solar system is more or less under way. We've put people on the moon, sent probes to Mars and Venus, lofted satelites near the sun (within a few tens of millions of miles), and one satellite even left the solar system a few years ago.
答：在经过两年半的飞行后，卫星旅行者二号将在1989年到达海王星。另外，向哈雷丰厚生汇合的地方发射了五个探测器。所以可以说，对太阳系的探索已或多或少地在进行了。我们已经把人送上了月球，向火星和金星发射了探测器，把卫星发射到了太阳附近（距太阳几千万英里处），甚至一个卫星已在几年前离开了太阳系。
13. But visiting the stars is something else again. Light takes four years to reach the nearest stars, so you can see that it would take satellite hundreds of thousands of years.
不过拜访别的恒星仍是另一回事到达离我们最近的恒星是４光年，所以，卫星要到达这颗恒星会用上几十万年。
14. Of course, if the earth were to become overpopulated, we can imagine sending families in space vessels to colonize the nearest stars. But it's their great-great-great-grandchildren who would finally reach those stars. And they wouldn't even know where to stop
当然，如果地球上的人口过多的话，我们可以想象，把一些家庭送进太空船中，让他们去开发最近的恒星。但是，最终到达这些恒星的是他们的万代子孙了，而且，他们可能甚至不知该在哪里落足。
15.Q. Do you think there are other inhabited planets?
问：你认为是否有其他有人居住的行星？
16. A. If you are asking me to state a belief, I'd say yes. Others in my profession do not believe this. So it's a matter of opinion. Why do I believe there are? No matter how far back into the universe we look, we find the same elements: atoms, molecules, stars, galaxles. We can show that the laws of physics have remained unchanged through 15 billion light-years.
答：如果你是让我说出一种信念，我要说有。我的同行不相信有，所以这是看法不同的问题。我为什么相信有呢？不管我们回顾宇宙的历史到多久以前，我们都发现同样的要素――原子、分子、恒星和星系。我们能够证明，各项物理定律在１５０亿光年之内一直未曾改变。
17. It is this homogeneity in the way the universe behaves that allows us to think that life is not an improbable phenomenon, but a normal property of matter at the highest levels of its organization. Sow we can suppose that life appears when conditions permit.
正是宇宙演化的这种同源性，使我们认为生命不是不可能的现象，而是物质在其最高级组合上的正常属性。所以，我们可以假设：当各种条件允许时，生命就会出现。
18. There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and over a billion yellow stars like our sun. We don't know if they all have planets, but we have good reason to think that planetary systems are common. Suppose there were only one planet like the earth for every ten yellow stars; that alone makes 100 million worlds comparable to ours -- just in our galaxy! And there are billions of galaxies.
在我们的星系中有一千亿颗恒星，像我们的太阳一样的黄色恒星就有十亿多。我们不敢说它们都有行星，但我们有充分的理由认为行星系是很平常的。假定每十颗黄色恒星中只有一个有像我们地球这样的行星，仅此一项在我们的星系中就会有一百万个类似我们地球这样的世界！而宇宙中的星系又有上百亿之多。