《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第52期:星級塞斯納(1)

INTERPLANETARY CESSNA

星級塞斯納

Q. What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different solar system bodies?

Q．如果你試圖在太陽系其他天體上駕駛普通的地球飛機會怎樣？

A. HERE'S OUR AIRCRAFT:

A．下面先請出我們的飛機：

We have to use an electric motor because gas engines work only near green plants. On worlds without plants, oxygen doesn't stay in the atmosphere-it combines with other elements to form things like carbon dioxide and rust. Plants undo this by stripping the oxygen back out and pumping it into the air. Engines need oxygen in the air to run.

這裏我們要用電動引擎，因爲燃油引擎只能在有綠色植物的星球上使用。在沒有植物的星球上，氧氣並不會留在大氣層中，它會和其他元素結合成二氧化碳和鏽跡等東西。植物的存在會把這些氧給拽出來，並重新送回到空氣中。引擎需要氧氣才能正常工作。

Here's our pilot:

然後是我們的飛行員：

Here's what would happen if our aircraft were launched above the surface of the 32 largest solar system bodies:

下面這張圖則會告訴你當飛機在太陽系最大的32顆星球表面上空釋放時會發生什麼。

In most cases, there's no atmosphere, and the plane would fall straight to the ground. If it were dropped from 1 kilometer or less, in a few cases the crash would be slow enough that the pilot could survive-although the life-support equipment probably wouldn't.

大多數星球上是沒有大氣的，所以飛機是直挺挺地摔向地面。如果墜落高度是1千米或更低的話，在一些星球上墜落的速度很慢，飛行員可能會活下來——但機載的生命維持系統大概撐不住。

There are nine solar system bodies with atmospheres thick enough to matter: Earth-obviously-Mars, Venus, the four gas giants, Saturn's moon Titan, and the Sun. Let's take a closer look at what would happen to a plane on each one.

太陽系有9顆星球有足夠濃密的大氣：地球——顯而易見——還有火星、金星、四大氣態巨行星、土星的衛星泰坦，還有太陽。現在讓我們仔細分析下在這些星球上分別會發生什麼。

The Sun: This would work about as well as you'd imagine. If the plane were released close enough to the Sun to feel its atmosphere at all, it would be vaporized in less than a second.

太陽：嗯，跟你想象的差不多。如果飛機釋放的距離近到能夠感受到太陽大氣的話，它會在1秒之內灰飛煙滅。

Mars: To see what would happen to our aircraft on Mars, we turn to X-Plane.

火星：要想知道在火星上駕駛飛機是什麼感覺，那麼就試試X-Plane火星模擬飛行吧。

X-Plane is the most advanced flight simulator in the world. The product of 20 years of obsessive labor by a hardcore aeronautics enthusiast and community of supporters, it actually simulates the flow of air over every piece of an aircraft's body as it flies. This makes it a valuable research tool, since it can accurately simulate entirely new aircraft designs-and new environments.

X-Plane是世界上最先進的飛行模擬器之一。這款軟件由一羣熱心的航空專業人士和社區志願者們歷時20年編寫出來，能夠模擬飛機飛行時流過每一寸機身的氣流。這使得它成爲一個極爲有用的研究工具，因爲它能準確模擬出全新設計的飛機以及環境。