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A few days ago, a group of us from SpaceX took the afternoon off to watch Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’. We loved it. Then again, we don’t get out very often. We probably could have sat through ‘Gigli’ and loved it. 就在几天前，我们一行人刚从太空探索技术公司回来并利用下午的休假去看了克里斯蒂夫·诺兰的《星际穿越》。一句话，我们很喜欢。当然，我们很少有机会出去玩，所以就算是去看《鸳鸯绑匪》这种烂片我们也是很开心的。 As for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but there were a few things that struck me as inaccurate. First and foremost – the casting. I mean, is it really necessary to fill every astronaut movie with actors like Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, and Kevin Bacon? How am I supposed to live up to that? I’m only 5 foot 5 inches tall, for crying out loud! Once, just once, can’t someone make a blockbuster space action-adventure movie starring Paul Giamatti or Wallace Shawn? Please? 就我个人来讲，我十分欣赏这部电影，不过其中还是有些不精确的细节让我不爽。第一条，也是我最看重的——选角。我想说的是，真的有必要让每部航天题材电影都给马修·麦康纳、安妮·海瑟薇、乔治·克鲁尼、桑德拉·布洛克、汤姆·汉克斯、凯文·贝肯这些俊男靓女去演吗？我怎么可能期望自己长这么帅？我真想大喊一声：我才5英尺5英寸高啊！就不能有人让保罗·吉亚玛提或是华莱士·肖恩这些其貌不扬的演员去拍太空冒险大片吗？一次也好？ There were lesser flaws worth noting. (Spoilers follow!) For example, there is no way a big government bureaucracy like NASA has a meeting with less than a dozen participants. Secondly, as with many movies that depict artificial gravity achieved through a rotating spacecraft structure, the Endurance’s diameter was much too small to create a non-nauseating equivalent of Earth’s gravity. Finally, if an advanced civilization can create a time-space bookshelf tesseract, why can’t they equip it with a whiteboard? I know that using flying books, misbehaving watches, and binary dust patterns are much more dramatic means of communication, but explaining a completely new unified theory of gravitational force would be much easier with equations and diagrams than with a seemingly random set of binary data. 电影中倒是存在一些微小的瑕疵。（剧透预警！）比如说，像美国国家航天局（NASA）这么大的政府机构在电影中开会时就只有不到一打的人，这是说不过去的。还有，在很多电影中都描绘了让飞船自旋获得人工重力的场景，但坚忍号飞船的环状结构直径实在太小了，要达到产生地球重力的转速那船里的人都要转吐了。最后再提一点，如果那个高级文明能创造一个书架结构的四维时空立方体，那它们为什么不在上面装一个绘图板呢？我知道用敲落书本、拨动手表指针、把尘土排成二进制信息这样的沟通方式更富戏剧性，但要解释一个全新的引力统一理论的话，用方程式和图表可比貌似随机的二进制数据好懂多了。 But there were a lot of things that ‘Interstellar’ gets right. Many of the relativistic effects were spot on. (Or at least so I am told by some of my old Caltech buddies.) It was interesting to see many examples of space hardware that were familiar. The deep freezer that holds the frozen embryos of our progeny looks just like the one we have on the International Space Station. (Although we don’t have genetic material to populate a planet in there, yet perhaps that would be a good idea…) The hemispherical windows on Endurance look just like the Cupola on the International Space Station and many of the switch panels would have seemed at home on Endeavour. And as we all know, Love truly transcends time and space. 但是《星际穿越》还是把大部分东西都搞对了。影片中出现了很多相对论效应的描写（至少加利福尼亚理工学院的老同学是这么讲的）。我对影片中许多面熟的宇航设备也很感兴趣。影片中储存我们后代胚胎的冷冻箱看起来就和国际空间站上的一模一样（虽然我们没在里面存放殖民外星用的遗传物质，不过存一点可能是个好主意）。坚忍号的半球形窗户就像国际空间站上的穹顶窗，飞船上的许多控制面板让我感觉好像回到了奋进号航天飞机上。而且我们都懂的，爱的确能穿越时空。 It was particularly interesting for me to note how often Cooper takes manual control of his spacecraft. Bucking the real-world trend toward ever-increasing automation, it seemed like every 5 minutes he was grabbing the stick and taking manual control. As metaphor, clearly this represents the characters’ desperate attempts to control their own destiny, and the destiny of their species. ‘Interstellar’ is an expression of our very strong American notion of free will – that we are all free agents able to make choices that shape our destiny. With this free agency comes a heavy burden of responsibility; witness the crushing defeat in Professor Brand’s vain struggle to enact the destiny he so desires for the human race. But free will is an essential ingredient of the quintessential American hero archetype – the explorer, the pioneer – the lone individual who rises to the challenge and save s the day through skill, grit, and initiative - Cooper. While other cultures place value in collective group effort or trust in fate rather than cherish individual achievement, we do not. We accept the burden of our choices as well as their rewards. This archetype is part and parcel of our national character and it is important to hold fast to this mythology to inspire our next generation of Coopers as we confront the new frontier of space. 我尤其对其中男主角库伯频繁手动操纵飞船这点很感兴趣。与自动化控制势不可挡的现实世界相比，在电影中库伯似乎每5分钟就要接过操纵杆开始手动控制。这种举动很明显是在隐喻主角不顾一切地想要掌握住他们自己乃至全人类的命运。《星际穿越》是对美国式自由精神的生动描绘，即我们都是通过自我选择塑造命运的自由人。与这种自由精神俱来的是责任感带来的重负——看看布兰德教授在决定人类命运的徒劳斗争中惨遭完败后的落魄就能理解；但自由意志是美国式典型英雄（如探索者、开拓者）的必备特质，是那些勇于接受挑战并发挥自己的才华、坚韧和意志力反败为胜的孤胆英雄们的人格特征——就像库伯那样。我们不像其他民族把集体成就或顺从天命看得比争取个人荣誉更重要，而是独自承担决择所带来的重负和回报。这种典型品德是美国民族精神的一部分，我们必须重视发扬这种品质去激励下一代的“库伯“开拓太空新疆域。 Of course, the other main theme of ‘Interstellar’ is the relationship between fathers and their children. This aspect of the movie definitely rang true to me too. 当然，《星际穿越》的另一个主题是讲述父亲与子女的亲情。这一点在我看来也是真实可信的。 A short while ago, I returned from a speaking engagement wearing my blue NASA astronaut flight jacket. When I arrived at home to tuck my 4-year old son into bed for the night, he looked up at me and asked if I had just been to space again. When I told him no, he asked, “Well, are you going to space again soon?” 不久之前，我参加完一次报告会后，穿着我的蓝色NASA航天员飞行服回家。当我到家已是深夜，在哄我4岁的儿子上床睡觉时，他抬头看着我，问我是不是刚从太空回来。我说不是。然后他问：“那你马上就要上太空吗？” “Not without you,” I replied sincerely. “我带你一起去。”我真心告诉他。 At first a look of reassured contentment came over his face only to be followed by the furrowed brow of concern and worry. 他脸上露出欣慰满足的神情，但马上就皱起了眉头。 “But I don’t have a flight jacket,” he said. “可是我没有自己的飞行服。” I love that kid. I’d definitely fly into a black hole in order to save him. 我爱我的儿子，为了他我就是飞进黑洞也愿意。 加载全文 |
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