建议同学们要注意
Topic 4
Reading
Soon there will be something new for the tourist who has been everywhere and seen everything on Earth. Spacecraft being developed by private commercial companies will soon enable private citizens to buy their own tickets to travel into space, thereby creating a space tourism industry. So far, space travel has been undertaken only by governments, but the new, privatized spaceflight industry will bring great benefits to both science and the public.
First, private space travel will benefit serious space exploration by making spaceflight cheaper. Privatization of space technology will bring technological costs down very fast because it will allow competition—and competition is one of the strongest motivators to cut costs. Thus, lowering the cost of space travel will benefit not only space tourists but also scientists, who will be able to use private space flights for research purposes.
Furthermore, privatization of space travel will accelerate the rate at which important scientific discoveries occur. The aerospace industry already sponsors发起，主办 a lot of groundbreaking scientific research, and adding private spaceflight companies to it will make the industry as a whole grow in size, thereby employing more scientists than it does now. That increased number of working scientists means not only that more discoveries are likely to be made but also that those discoveries are likely to be made more quickly than in the past.
Finally, when governments are the sole providers of space travel, the costs are paid for by the whole taxpaying public, but with privatization, the expenses of space travel will be borne by the customers of the industry. The fact that private spaceflight operators will be able to raise funds through ticket sales means that the financial burden on taxpayers will be eased significantly.
Topic 4
Listening
Well, it looks as though we’ll soon see private spaceships carrying tourists into space. But will it really provide great benefits for serious science and for the public? I don’t think so.
First, privatized space travel, which is extraordinarily expensive, is likely to stay that way. For one thing, commercial space travel will require an elaborate space traffic-control system to prevent collisions—and the development and operation of such a system won’t come cheap either. Another thing that’ll keep costs high is tested and retested—and that also tends to be a very expensive process. Both of those costs will be reflected in the prices of the spaceflight tickets, so no one should expect the cost of space flights to go down fast.
Second, if commercial spaceflight has any effect at all on the rate of scientific discovery and innovation, it will be to delay or even prevent such discovery and innovation. If the best and the brightest engineers get lured away from government space programs by the high salaries offered by private, for-profit companies, they might end up working on commercial stuff that doesn't have much scientific value. And as a result, serious space research might actually suffer.
And finally, will the taxpaying public get off the hook financially? No chance! The fact is that so-called private space tourism isn’t possible without huge public tax subsidies. It will take billions and billions of dollars to build space stations, space airports, and so on, and private investors simply cannot raise such huge amounts. So the burden on taxpayers won’t be significantly eased with the development of the private spaceflight industry. In fact, all taxpayers’ll be paying more to subsidize the vacations of the space tourists.