SpaceX計劃年發射無人飛船前往火星

Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, announced last Wednesday morning it planned to send one of its spaceships to Mars by 2018, the most ambitious goal set to date by the burgeoning private space travel industry funded by billionaires instead of governments.

上週三早晨，伊隆·馬斯克的火箭公司SpaceX宣佈其計劃在2018年向火星發射太空飛船。這是目前私人公司中最具野心的目標。私人太空旅遊產業並非由政府資助，而是由富翁們出資。

The mission would be unmanned, Musk said in a Twitter post, but the flights will be used to learn how to land the sorts of large payloads humans would need should they ever colonize the red planet, another SpaceX executive said.

馬斯克發推表示，這次將會是一艘無人太空飛船。另一位SpaceX的主管表示，這些飛行會被用來研究人類在定居火星時所需的負載量。

These days it takes about eight months to get to Mars via rocket, according to Nasa.

根據NASA表示，依靠目前的技術，到達火星需要八個月的時間。

And as Musk notes, the inside of his Dragon 2 rocket offers about as much space as a sport utility vehicle.

馬斯克表示，他的龍2飛船內部空間至少得容得下一部運動型多用途車。

SpaceX recently made a breakthrough in privatized space flight. In early April it landed a reusable rocket on a robot-controlled floating platform; the idea being that would make it much cheaper to keep sending people beyond the atmosphere.

最近，SpaceX公司在太空飛行中取得了新突破。四月初，它成功地使一架可回收火箭在機器人控制的浮動平臺上着陸。這個創意能夠爲持續將人類送出大氣層節省了一大筆費用。

Nasa meantime is working on its own Mars missions, including an effort to send humans there by the 2030s.

同時，NASA也正進行其火星計劃。其中就包括在2030年將人類送往火星。

But the US government has restricted the space program's funding in recent years, leaving it up to billionaires such as Musk, 's Jeff Bezos and Virgin's Richard Branson to fund their own would-be galactic fleets.

但是近幾年來，美國政府一直限制該太空計劃的預算，於是將機會留給了像馬斯克、亞馬遜總裁傑夫和維珍總裁理查德·布蘭森這樣的億萬富翁們。他們用自己的資金來打造私人未來銀河艦隊。

The SpaceX executive said Nasa would offer some technical support, such as use of a deep-space communications network, but its Mars flight would be a “SpaceX mission”.

SpaceX的總經理表示，NASA會提供一些包括深空通訊網絡的使用方法在內的技術支持，但這是SpaceX自己的火星項目。