YOU ARE GOING TO READ A MAGAZINE ARTICLE ON SPACE TRAVEL
Questions 51-55: You are going to read a magazine article on space travel. Five paragraphs have been
removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (51- 55).
There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).
Write your answers into the box below.
CHEAP ACCESS TO SPACE
Charles Conrad went to the moon with Apollo 12 and circled the Earth in Skylab. But from now on, he is
going to aim high for himself. His company, Universal Space Lines, hopes to produce a more economic
rocket that will be able to go in space again and again.
(0) _____ G _____
NASA, the U.S, government-owned space program, plans to develop such a rocket. However, the
immediate priority is missions to Mars, which will require different technology. So it is more likely that
people outside the NASA program will develop re-useable rocket design. Rick Tumlinson runs an
independent organization called the Space Frontier Foundation and firmly believes that it is time for
business to get involved.
(51) __________
So Tumlinson is also in business to prove a point. Space is our destiny, he says, so why not get on with it a
bit more eagerly? To this end, the SFF is holding a conference in Los Angeles shortly, to be called Space:
Open for Business.
(52) __________
Another company, Kistler Aerospace, has similar plans; “Our goal is to become a delivery service to low
Earth orbit that will radically re-align the economics of doing business in space. Satellites will be our
parcels: our vehicles will be operated in repeated flights with air freights efficiency.”
(53) __________
Their own view is that it is impossible for NASA, which is government-owned, to offer an “open frontier”.
This is not a matter of budgets or schedules, but of fundamental purpose and design. NASA is “elitist and
exclusive”, whereas the SFF believes in opportinities for everyone “a future of endlessly expanding new
choices”.
(54) __________
Of course, the ex-astronaut and businessman Charles Conrad agrees. “I’m trying to get affordable space
transportation up and operative so that everybody can enjoy space. And by the way, the Japanese are hard
at work building a space hotel.”
(55) __________
If he is right, mass space travel will have arrived by 2050 and space tourism will have become a viable
industry. More importantly, the human race will have made serious progress in crossing that final frontier.
A. Companies will always be looking for profit. For this reason, the SFF is not in favor of American
missions to Mars, claiming that there’s nothing in it for investors. At the same time, they do accept
that these missions could bring scientific benefits.
B.
He sees the NASA program as a bit of a dinosaur. “25 years after the Wright Brothers, people could
buy a commercial plane ticket ... but many years after landing on the moon, we sat around watching
old astronauts on TV talking about the good old days.”
C.
In 1997, the SFF ran a survey on the Internet, called “Cheap Access to Space”, where it asked
American taxpayers for their views on the U.S space program and on what American’s future
priorities should be in space transportation.
D.
U.S government officials don’t see the future for space tourism. Here again, private companies may
well prove them wrong. David Ashford, director of Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, once said that space
tourism would begin ten years after people stopped laughing at the concept. Recently, he added this
striking comment: “people have stopped laughing.”
E.
Charles Conrad is due to speak there. But his company is in fact only one of several that already
have blueprints for getting into space and back cheaply. Rotary is working on something that would
be launched like a rocket but return like a helicopter. Pioneer Rocket plane believes there could be a
million dollar market in delivering packages from one side of the planet to the other in an hour.
F.
They would like to see “irreversible human settlement” in space as soon as possible and maintain
that this will only happen through free enterprise. “Building buildings and driving trucks is not what
astronauts should be doing; that’s what the private sector does.”
G
“Cheap” is an important word in space technology nowadays and re-useable rockets will be a key
way of controlling costs. They will deliver things to orbits, bring stuff back to Earth and then go up
again, perhaps with machinery for a space factory, or even carrying tourists.
Your answers:
0. G
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.