首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Fantasy Flight: Chiaki Mukai, Japan’s First Female Astronaut Raised by a working mother in Gunma Prefecture, a place known f
Fantasy Flight: Chiaki Mukai, Japan’s First Female Astronaut Raised by a working mother in Gunma Prefecture, a place known f
admin
2010-03-26
47
问题
Fantasy Flight: Chiaki Mukai, Japan’s First Female Astronaut
Raised by a working mother in Gunma Prefecture, a place known for dry winds and tough women, Chiaki Mukai decided she wanted to become a doctor while she was still in elementary school. At 32, she was a cardiovascular(心血管的)surgeon and chief resident at the Keio Hospital in Tokyo. Then she saw the newspaper ad that changed her life.
The beginning of a dream
The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) was looking for astronauts. What really shocked Chiaki, as she prefers to be known, was that there were no gender restrictions.
She suffered for three days. Weightlessness has much to offer scientific research, she thought. If I don’t try, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
"I had no idea what to expect," Chiaki said, giving one of her trademark smiles. "But I started two training programs the day I sent in my application. First, I started learning English. Then I began working out with weights."
Her English study program was entirely self-constructed. She made English labels for everything in the house. "I wanted it to seem like I was living in an English-speaking country," she explained. She answered the phone in English. She read English-language books. In August 1985, NASDA chose three payload specialists for the 1992 Spacelab-J launch — Mamoru Mohri, Takao Doi, and Chiaki Mukai. Chiaki’s journey to the stars had begun.
The journey to space
"You can never give up," Chiaki says. "The life of Marie Curie taught me that. I read time and again how she struggled with her home, her children, and her scientific dream. And she achieved her goals — even though it cost her life.’
"My mother is the same kind of woman. She didn’t want to depend on someone else for her livelihood, so she opened a haberdashery(男子服饰用品店)in our hometown. She still runs it."
Chiaki’s mother didn’t blink an eye when her daughter told her of being chosen as an astronaut. "You never know what life’s going to deal you," she said to Chiaki. "So you must do what you really want to."
Once she started her training for space, Chief’s roster(名单)of heroes grew longer. "Yuri Gagarin was the pioneer," she said. "I have immense respect for him. And Nell Armstrong — it was really great, what he did. That must have been a ’fantastic voyage’. But then all the people I worked with at NASA and NASDA are heroes in their own way. So how do I choose?
Chiaki gestured at the bustle(喧嚣)of Tokyo outside the window. "From here, we can’t see very much. But from 300 miles up, you realize how small the earth is. But you know what I first learned in Orlando, Florida — at Disneyworld." Which brings Chiaki to another of her heroes: Walt Disney. Like Chiaki, he was a dreamer. And he shared his dreams of fantastic worlds with others. She is fascinated by the way his movies, gentle and natural, teach us about humanity.
"Disney, and science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, realized the Earth is just a small planet without having to go into space. Their accomplishment is much greater in a way than ours. We saw with our eyes. They saw with their minds’ eyes."
The first Japanese astronaut to fly an American space shuttle was Mamoru Mohri, who went as payload specialist on the Spacelab-J, a flight funded largely by Japan. Chiaki and Takao Doi backed him up.
After Mohri’s flight touched down, Chiaki journeyed back to Japan to begin work in the microgravity lab at Tsukuba. But word soon came that she had been chosen as payload specialist for the International Microgravity Laboratory-2 (IML-2), so she returned to take up the training where she’d paused.
"Mohri was chosen to fly the Japanese-funded space shuttle, so there was never any doubt that he’d go. But the IML-2 was an international flight. NASA didn’t have to choose me. And there were half-a- dozen well-qualified alternatives who could have gone in my place. The pressure is tremendous. ’
Chiaki says she had a hard time understanding jokes told in southern accents. "Flying is fine. Acronyms(首字母缩拼词) are easy to learn, so you don’t even have to speak in sentences. But jokes. Whew! Or tales about family. Any time the subject strayed from work, I was in trouble. ’
In preparation for her flight, Chiaki took more than a thousand of the training flights that give passengers twenty seconds of weightlessness. "Twenty seconds is nothing like the real thing," Chiaki says ruefully. "No matter how many times you do it."
The dream came true
On 8 July 1994, a quarter of a century after Neff Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon, the IML-2 mission blasted off. Soon the shuttle Columbia was in orbit, and Chiaki’s work began. Before the shuttle touched down two weeks later, she had appeared on children’s television, played midwife(接生婆)to a brood of newts(蝾螈), used her own body to record the effects of weightlessness on human beings 82 experiments in all.
"Way out there, looking down at the curvature of the earth, I couldn’t help thinking what a small world this is. Compared to all of outer space, Earth is like one tiny plankton (浮游生物) swimming in a vast ocean. Yet look at the power of mankind. Look where we are, 300 miles above the surface. We’re so very fragile, yet so very strong.
"Back on earth, I made an astounding discovery. When you let go of things, they drop! I was constantly reminded of Earth’s tremendous pull. For nearly three days after touchdown, every step reminded me of gravity. Every move I made was a tussle with weight. Yet after three days, my body adjusted. Isn’t that marvelous?" While scientists continue to research the many implications of weightlessness, Chiaki envisions great medical benefits from microgravitational situations. Rehabilitation (康复)would make tremendous strides, she maintains. "People with handicaps in full gravity might not have them in zero gravity conditions. They could practice movements at zero, 0.25 G, 0.5G, and so on until they were competent at normal gravity. "
To understand the functions of the eye, we remove all light, Chiaki explains. To understand the functions of the ear, we remove all sound, and work from there. So she says that removing the weight of gravity will bring mankind new understanding of how the human body works.
The impossible dream
Cervantes is another Chiaki hero.., or perhaps we should say Don Quixote. "I love Man of La Mancha. I cry every time I see it." She hums: "To dream the impossible dream .... "
"I like the way they translated that song into Japanese," she says. "Instead of ’ impossible dream’, it comes out unreachable dream and means that as soon as you have fulfilled one dream, another even more vivid dream forms."
She stands in her grey-green double-breasted suit and thrusts out a hand. Her grasp is firm, like her vision. With a smile, she strides away. Back to her laboratory in Tsukuba. Where she’ll work regular 12- hour days..., reaching for the stars.
Seen from the outer space, the earth is much smaller than the other planets or stars.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Qhk7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
A、Thewomanshouldhaveathoroughrest.B、Thewomanshouldseekmedicaltreatment.C、Thewomanshouldcallthefiredepartment.
A、Thecountryside.B、Anearbyuniversity.C、Abroad.D、Abigcompany.CM:We’recertainlyfortunatetohaveyoustudentstohelp
Naturehassuppliedeveryanimalexceptmanwithsomecoveringforhisbodysuchasfur,feathers,hair,orathickhide.Butma
Thepassageischieflyabout______.Theunderwaterlisteningsystemwasoriginallydesigned______.
A、Theleft-handedwomen.B、Theleft-handedmen.C、Excellentfemalescientistsorartists.D、Somecelebratedfemalepresidents.B
Inhisyouth,KnuteAxelbrodwantedtolearnmanylanguages,toknoweverythingabouthumanhistory,to【B1】wisebyreadinggreat
Kuwaitisacountrywhichisquitesmall,butwhichisquiterich.Ithasapopulationofalittlemorethanamillion,anditi
A、Hecouldn’tsleepwellbecauseofhisillness.B、Hesleptforawhileandstudiedalittle.C、Hedidn’tdoanythinginparticu
Whatdoestheauthormeanbysaying"ForcolleaguesintheEast,thepainismorelikelytocomethroughapaycut"?Whatisth
Ofthemanydiscouragingaspectsofcomputersecurity,oneoftheworstisthatoffendersarerarelypunishedatall,letalone
随机试题
下列关于长期股权投资的确认,表述正确的有()。
甲公司于2017年6月1日签发了一张以乙公司为收款人、丙公司为付款人、金额为10万元、付款日期为2017年9月6日的商业汇票。乙公司在取得票据后,将该票据背书转让给丁公司,并将付款日期变更为2017年6月6日。乙公司的变更行为是()。
全野外调绘法,调绘工作一次性全部完成,精度高但用时较长且工作强度较大,适用于影像()和调查经验不足人员使用。
客车运行作业计划是将()在时间上和岗位上的具体落实。[2007年真题]
全面落实科学发展观,构建社会主义和谐社会迫切需要统筹解决人口()等问题。
据报载,江苏某少年成为上海心脏移植存活时间最长的“换心人”。假设该少年所患的心脏病由一对基因控制。下列遗传系谱图是其部分家庭成员的情况,其中Ⅲ11表示该少年。经查,他母亲家族史上无该病患者。设该病有关的一对等位基因,显性基因和隐性基因分别为A、a。请回答:
阅读下面的文章,完成下列问题。①周代,尽管关于食品安全事件的记载不多,但我们还是看到,由于食品安全关系重大,统治者对此非常重视并作出了特别规定。周代的食品交易是以直接收获采摘的初级农产品为主,所以对农产品的成熟度十分关注。据《礼记》记载,周代对食品交易的
世界上最早发明陶瓷器的国家是()。
一个各位不相同的8位数密码,任意相邻两个数字之和为质数,则最大的8位数各位数字之和为多少?
信息爆炸
最新回复
(
0
)