Вариант 9

1. Переведите тексты на русский язык.

Will Humans Ever Visit Mars?

Now the possibility of people walking on the surface of Mars is real enough. The question is not whether humans will go to Mars. The question is when they will go, how they will get there and who will go first

No one yet knows the best way to get to Mars. As to the cost of such a venture, Dr. Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, estimates it could be done for about the price of the Apollo Moon project, $40 billion in today’s dollars.

Dr. Zubrin wrote a book “The Case for Mars “, a blueprint for humans settling the planet. His approach is sending unpiloted vehicles in stages to provide equipment and a way to get home for the people who will land later.

This approach avoids the difficulty of developing one giant ship with equipment and supplies for a round trip.

The first landing will be a spaceship that will be like a return vehicle. It will land intact, so it will be able to take off again, but its fuel will be used up.

Supply, mining and processing vessels will follow. The humans will arrive last. They will dig for subsurface water and other materials that will be converted into fuel for the trip home.

Mars is the obvious first choice for travel to other planets. Of all the other planets in the solar system, Mars, even with its present cold, hostile environment, is the most like Earth. About half Earth’s diameter with one third the gravity and only 1 per cent of the atmosphere, spacecraft have found that Mars harbors the important asset of water beneath its surface and in its frozen poles.

Every two years its orbit draws Mars closer to Earth, and its presence in the night sky is a constant reminder of what might be. In 2003 it came within 34.6 million miles of Earth, its nearest approach in almost 60, 000 years.

Only Venus is closer, and with an average temperature of about 850 degrees, it is not welcoming. In contrast, Mars is pleasantly cool, from about 200 degrees below zero right up to freezing.

From the presence of water and relatively temperate climate comes another powerful attraction. It is centered round the issue of life. Mars is the key to answering that question, is there life somewhere other than Earth?

Dr. Louis D. Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, said, “The fundamental question people want answered is “Where am I from and where am I going?” He added, “Mars can tell us about the origin of life and the destiny of life.” Finding evidence of past and present life, even if only primitive microbes will mean that life did not occur only on Earth, he said. And Mars is the only planet we know of that humans have a choice of colonizing to prove that they will not be forever Earth-bound.

Mars becomes the experiment. If we can’t make it on Mars, then Earth is our limit and we have to re-examine our relationship to our home planet.

Where Are Those Aliens?

In the half century since 1950’s spacecraft have visited or inspected every planet but Pluto and all the major moons in the solar system, but still have to find a sign of life. Astronomers have examined thousands of stars for radio signals from extraterrestrials. So far, the silence is deafening.

The galaxy holds some 200 billion stars. Depending on how plentiful Earth-like planets are and how likely the evolution of life and intelligence is, astronomers say there could be millions of civilizations in the galaxy, or only one.

The argument goes like this: Aliens could spread throughout the Milky Way in far less than the 10 billion years that the galaxy has existed, even if they travel at far less speed than the speed of light, Einstein’s cosmic speed limit.

Suppose, for example, that the first alien starship that sets out for another star takes a million years to arrive there. Then the new colony and the original civilization each send a spaceship on a similar voyage, and so forth.

After 10 million years there will be 1, 023 alien settlements, plus the original. After 20 million years, there will be a million. After 40 million years, if they keep it up, there will be a trillion – more than there are stars in the galaxy.

By now, after 10 billion years, if there were more than one spacefaring civilization in the galaxy, they would be tripping over one another. But in fact there seems to be nothing.

So, where are they?

One answer is the imaginative “zoo hypothesis”. It says that aliens are in fact here, or at least watching us, but are pledged to not interfere. It means that we are being treated more ethically than we have traditionally treated animals and indigenous cultures here on Earth.

Of course, “they” could be here, and we might not recognize them, any more than ants would recognize the Mona Lisa or, say, the Internet as artifacts of superior beings.

NASA has lately made the search for signs of extraterrestrial life a centerpiece mission. But that mission, as astrobiologists concede, is hostage to our concepts of life and intelligence. We are good at looking for things like ourselves.

Absence of evidence, as astronomers like to say, is not evidence of absence. The scientific thing to do is to keep searching.

2. Переведите следующие словосочетания на русский язык:

1. Earth-like planets; 6. home planet;

2. to convert into fuel; 7. a round trip;

3. a blueprint for humans; 8. to land intact;

4. and so forth; 9. subsurface water;

5. executive director; 10. to take off

3. Найдите в тексте эквиваленты следующих словосочетаний:

1. средняя температура; 6.непилотируемые

корабли;

2. высшие существа; 7. способ добраться

домой;

3. запас воды; 8. под поверхностью;

4. навсегда привязанный к Земле; 9. вопрос жизни;

5. заканчиваться ( о топливе); 10. снабдить

оборудованием

4. Найдите в тексте однокоренные слова, определите, к какой части речи они относятся, и переведите их на русский язык:

1. remind; 6. piloted;

2. equip; 7. relative;

3. attract; 8. power;

4. found; 9. plenty;

5. difficult; 10. imagine

5. Задайте к выделенному предложению все типы вопросов: общий, альтернативный, специальный (а) к подлежащему, б) к второстепенному члену предложения), разделительный:

Every two years its orbit draws Mars closer to Earth.

6.Найдите и выпишите из данных предложений случаи следующих грамматических явлений: группа времен Indefinite в действительном и страдательном залогах, модальные глаголы и их эквиваленты, степени сравнения прилагательных, притяжательный падеж и множественное число имени существительного:

1. Of all the other planets in the solar system, Mars, even with its present cold hostile environment, is the most like Earth.

2. Every two years its orbit draws Mars closer to Earth and its presence in the night sky is a constant reminder of what might be.

3. In 2003 it came within 34.6 million miles of Earth, its nearest approach in almost 60, 000 years.

4. Aliens could spread throughout the Milky Way in far less than the 10 billion years that the galaxy has existed, even if they travel at far less the speed of light, Einstein’s cosmic speed limit.

5. After 40 million years, if they keep it up, there will be a trillion – more than there are stars in the galaxy.

7. Ответьте на вопросы к тексту:

1. How much will getting to Mars cost?

2. What will the stages of getting to Mars be?

3. What are the advantages of Mars compared with Venus?

4. Why is getting to Mars so important?

5. How many stars does the galaxy have?

6. How fast could aliens spread throughout Milky Way?

7. What does the absence of evidence mean, as astronomers say?

8. Составьте аннотацию к тексту.

9. Составьте реферат текста (10-15 предложений).

10. Составьте план текста и устно перескажите текст.