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So what I'm going to talk about here is, this is a power station.
我今天想聊的主题是，这是一个发电站。
So if you've ever wondered what a couple of million horsepower looked like, that's pretty much what it looks like.
如果你们想知道几百万马力运转起来是什么样子，大概就是这样了。
And for me, it's always been about the rocket.
而对我来说，这总会让我联想到火箭。
In fact so much so that when I was growing up, the school called in my parents to have a bit of a discussion,
实际上，正因为如此，在我的成长过程中，学校会叫来我父母跟他们谈话，
because they believed that my aspirations were unrealistic for what I wanted to do.
因为他们觉得，我的想法要支撑起我想要做的事情并不现实。
And they suggested that I take up a job at the local aluminium smelter, because I was very good with my hands.
于是他们建议我在当地的电解铝厂找一份工作，因为我动手能力很强。
But for me, aluminium, or as you Canadians say, "aluminum," was not part of my plan at all.
但对我来说，铝，你们加拿大人这么读，完全不在我的计划之内。
So I started building rockets when I was at school. They got bigger and bigger.
于是我在上学的时候就开始制作火箭。我做出来的火箭越来越大。
I actually hold an unofficial land speed record for a rocket bike and roller blades while wearing a rocket pack.
其实我还有一份非官方的、穿上火箭背包后骑旋转刀片火箭自行车的最高陆地行驶记录。
But as the rockets got larger and larger, and more and more complex, I started to be able to think I could do something with this.
随着火箭变得越来越大，越来越复杂，我开始思考自己可以用它们来做些什么。
Now today we hear about very large rockets taking humans to, or aspiring to take humans to, the Moon, and Mars and beyond.
现在我们有听说那些大的火箭可以把人类带去或者说有希望把人类带去月球、火星或者太阳系之外。
And that's really important, but there's a revolution going on in the space industry,
这有非常重大的意义，但是太空行业正进行着一场革命，
and it's not a revolution of the big, it's a revolution of the small.
不是变大的那种革命，而是变小的革命。
So here we have an average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990.
1990年我们已经有了中号到大号的航天器。
We can tell it's 1990 because of the powder blue smocks for all the trained in the clean rooms in 1990.
能确认这是1990年，是因为那是在干净的房间里，工作人员穿的那种浅蓝色的工作服。
But that was your average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990. Here's a spacecraft that's going to launch this year.
这就是1990年中到大号的航天器。而这个是今年将要发射的航天器。
This particular spacecraft has four high-resolution cameras, a whole lot of senors, a CoMP communication system.
这个特别的航天器上有四个高清的摄像机，各种传感器，一个完善的交互系统。
We're going to launch thousands of these into the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. Quite different.
我们会把成千上万个这种小的航天器发射到太阳系中，以寻找外星生命。它们跟之前的火箭大不相同。
You see that Moore's law really applied itself to spacecraft.
可以看到摩尔定律在航天器的制造上体现地淋漓尽致。
However, the rockets that we've been building have been designed for carrying these very large, school-bus-sized spacecraft to orbit.
然而我们现在建造的火箭是用来把这些巨大的、像校车那么大的航天器发射到轨道的。
But this kind of launch vehicle here is not very practical for launching something that will fit on the tip of my finger.
但是用这种火箭发射像我手指尖那么大的航天器到宇宙中并不太现实。
And to give you a sense of scale here, this rocket is so large that I inserted a picture of myself in my underpants,
为了让你们感受一下它的尺寸，我在这里面插入了一张我穿着内裤的照片，
in complete confidence, knowing that you will not be able to find me.
我敢确定你们找不到我。
That's how big this rocket actually is. Moving on.
这个火箭就有这么大。我们继续。
So this is our rocket -- it's called the Electron.
这个就是我们的火箭，它的名字叫做“电子”。
It's a small launch vehicle for lifting these small payloads into orbit.
用这个小火箭可以把小的东西发射到轨道上。
And the key here is not the size of the rocket -- the key here is frequency.
但关键并不在于这个火箭的大小，而在于发射频率。
If you actually wanted to democratize space and enable access to space,
如果你真的想要太空变得大众化，想要打开一扇通往太空的门，
launch frequency is the absolute most important thing out of all of this.
发射频率绝对是最重要的问题。
Now in order to really democratize space, there's three things you have to do.
想要真正的让太空向大众开放，有三件事必须要做。
And each one of these three things has kind of the equivalent amount of work.
要完成这三件事所需要的工作量都差不多。
So the first is, obviously, you have to build a rocket.
第一件事很明显，你要造一座火箭。
The second is regulatory, and the third is infrastructure.
第二件事是监管条款，第三件事是基础设施。
So let's talk a little bit about infrastructure.
我们来聊聊基础设施。
So this is our launch site -- it's obviously not Cape Canaveral, but it's a little launch site
这是我们的发射中心，很明显这不是卡纳维拉尔角，这是一个小型的发射中心，
in fact, it's the only private orbiter launch site in the entire world, down in New Zealand.
实际上它是世界上唯一一个私人卫星发射中心，坐落于新西兰。
And you may think that's a bit of an odd place to build a rocket company and a launch site.
你可能会觉得在这里建一个火箭公司和一个发射中心有点奇怪。
But the thing is that every time you launch a rocket,
但实际上每次你发射一个火箭，
you have to close down around about 2,000 kilometers of airspace, 2,000 kilometers of marine and shipping space,
你都必须封锁将近2000千米的空域、海域和航运空间，
and ironically, it's one of the things in America that doesn't scale very well,
而讽刺的是，这件事在美国进行的并不顺利，
because every time you close down all that airspace, you disrupt all these travelers trying to get to their destination.
因为每次你把这片空域封锁起来，会导致所有的旅客去往目的地。
The airlines really hate rocket companies, because it costs them around $70,000 a minute, and so on.
航空公司也特别讨厌火箭公司，因为它们会让航空公司每分钟少赚大约七万美元，还有其他原因。
So what you really need, if you want to truly have rapid access to space, is a reliable and frequent access to space, is you need,
所以如果你真的想要快速进入太空的话，你真正需要的是一个可靠的、可以频繁进入太空的发射基地，
basically, a small island nation in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors and no air traffic.
你需要的最基本的是一个没有邻国、没有空中交通问题的小岛国。
And that just happened to be New Zealand. So, that's kind of the infrastructure bit.
那就是新西兰了。这是基础设施的部分。
Now the next bit of that is regulatory.
下一个部分是监管问题。
So, believe it or not, New Zealand is not known for its space prowess, or at least it wasn't.
无论你是否相信，新西兰在太空领域并不出名，或至少过去并不出名。
And you can't just rock on up to a country with what is essentially considered an ICBM,
你也不可能把一个会被当做洲际导弹的东西直接送到一个国家去，
because unfortunately, if you can put a satellite into orbit, you can use that rocket for doing significantly nasty things.
因为很不幸的是，如果你把能把卫星发射到轨道上，你就可以用这座火箭去做非常可怕的事。
So quickly, you run afoul of a whole lot of rules and regulations,
于是很快你就会遇上很多制度和规则上的麻烦，
and international treaties of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and whatnot.
还有禁止大规模杀伤性武器扩散的国际协定的禁令。
So it becomes quite complex. So in order for us to launch down in New Zealand,
于是问题就会变得非常复杂。为了获得在新西兰发射火箭的允许，
we had to get the United States government and the New Zealand government to agree to sign a bilateral treaty.
我们就要让美国政府和新西兰政府同意签订一个双边协定。
And then once that bilateral treaty was signed to safeguard the technology,
签署了保证技术安全的双边协定之后，
the New Zealand government had a whole lot of obligations.
新西兰政府就多了很多的责任。
And they had to create a lot of rules and regulations.
他们还要再制定一系列的规则和条款。
In fact, they had to pass laws through a select committee and through Parliament, ultimately, and to complete laws.
他们还要让这些规则和条款通过特别委员会和国会，最终形成法律。
Once you have laws, you need somebody who administers them. So they had to create a space agency.
有了法律之后，你还需要人去监督它们的实施。于是他们就需要再成立一个航天局。
And once they did, the Aussies felt left out, so they had to create a space agency. And on and on it goes.
有了航天局之后，澳大利亚人就会觉得他们被排除在外了，于是他们还需要建一个航天局。这些事情没完没了。
So you see, there's a massive portion of this, in fact, two thirds of it, that does not even involve the rocket.
所以看见了吧，这些问题占据了大部分的时间和精力，实际上，三分之二的事情跟火箭本身完全没有关系。
Now, let's talk about the rocket.
现在我们来聊聊火箭。
You know, what I didn't say is that we're actually licensed to launch every 72 hours for the next 30 years.
我前面没说，我们已经获得允许可以在接下来的30年里，每72个小时进行一次火箭发射。
So we have more launch availability as a private company than America does as an entire country.
所以作为一个私人公司，我们比美国这个国家拥有更高的发射频率。
And if you've got a launch every 72 hours, then that means you have to build a rocket every 72 hours.
而如果你每72小时发射一次，你就需要每72小时制造一个火箭。
And unfortunately, there's no such thing as just a one-stop rocket shop.
麻烦的是，世界上没有一站式火箭商店。
You can't go and buy bits to build a rocket. Every rocket is absolutely bespoke, every component is absolutely bespoke.
你没办法直接去买齐各种配件来装好一个火箭。每只火箭都是完全定制的，每一个部件也是完全定制的。
And you're in a constant battle with physics every day. Every single day, I wake up and I battle physics.
你每天都要跟物理学打交道。每天一醒来就是跟物理学打交道。
And I'll give you an example of this. So on the side of our rocket, there's a silver stripe.
我来给你们举个例子吧。火箭的边上有一条银色的条纹。
The reason is because there's avionic components behind there.
有这个条纹是因为火箭里面有航空电子。
We needed to lower the emissivity of the skin so we didn't cook the components from the sunlight. So we paint a silver stripe.
为了降低它们对皮肤的辐射，这些部件不能暴露在太阳光中。于是我们画了一条银色的条纹。
Unfortunately, as you're sailing through the Earth's atmosphere, you generate a lot of static electricity.
而麻烦的是，在穿过地球的大气层时，火箭会放射出很多静电。
And if you don't have conductive paint, you'll basically send lightning bolts down to the Earth.
如果你没有导电涂料，你就会把闪电射到地球上。
So even the silver paint has to be triboelectrificated and certified and applied and everything,
而这些银色的涂料还要经过审核、认证和应用等等程序，
and the stickers, they're a whole nother story. But even the simplest thing is always, always a real struggle.
还有那些贴纸，那就是另外一个故事了。但即使最简单的一个问题都总是很让人头疼。
Now, to the heart of any launch vehicle is the engine. This is our Rutherford rocket engine.
任何发射设备的核心都是引擎。这个就是我们的卢瑟福火箭引擎。
And usually, you measure rocket engines in terms of time to manufacture,
通常，衡量火箭引擎的标准是制作时间，
in terms of sort of months or even sometimes years, on really big engines.
一般是数月，那些很大的引擎有时耗时数年。
But if you're launching every 72 hours -- there's 10 engines per rocket -- then you need to produce an engine very quickly.
但如果你要每72小时发射一次，一个火箭上有十个引擎的话，那制造每个引擎的速度就需要非常快。
We needed to come up with a whole new process and a whole new cycle for the rocket engine.
我们制定了一整套新的程序和一整套新的制作火箭引擎的循环。
We came up with a new cycle called the electric turbo pump, but we also managed to be able to 3D-print these rocket engines.
这套新的循环叫做电动涡轮泵，我们同样可以用3D打印来制造火箭引擎。
So each one of these engines is 3D-printed out of Inconel superalloy,
3D打印每个引擎用的材料都是铬镍铁合金，
and right now, we can print round about one engine every 24 hours.
现在，每24小时我们就可以打印出来一台引擎。
Now, the electric turbo pump cycle is a totally different way to pump propellant into the rocket engine.
电动涡轮泵往火箭引擎运输推进燃料的方式完全不一样。
So we carry about one megawatt where the battery is on board.
于是我们采用了一个装电池的功率达兆瓦特的泵。
And we have little electric turbo pumps, about the size of a Coke can, not much bigger than a Coke can.
电动涡轮泵的尺寸也很小，跟可乐罐差不多，还没有可乐罐大。
They spin at 42,000 RPM,
它们的每分钟转速可以达到42000，
and each one of those Coke-can-sized turbo pumps produces about the same amount of horsepower as your average family car,
每一个可乐罐大小的涡轮泵产生的马力跟家用汽车的是一样的，
and we have 20 of them on the rocket.
每个火箭上有20个这样的泵。
So you can see even the simplest thing, like pumping propellants, always pretty much drives you insane.
你会发现，即使是像输送燃料这样简单的事情也会把人逼疯。
This is Electron, it works.
这就是“电子”，它运转地很好。
Not only does it work once, it seems to work quite frequently, which is handy when you've got a lot of customers to put on orbit.
它并不是一次性的，而是可以一直工作，所以当你有很多客人想要被送上轨道时，这就很方便了。
So far, we've put 25 satellites in orbit. And the really cool thing is we're able to do it very, very accurately.
目前我们已经发射了25颗卫星到轨道上。还有很厉害的一件事，那就是我们可以达到很高很高的精度。
In fact, we insert the satellites to within an accuracy of 1.4 kilometers.
实际上，卫星到达的精度可以控制在1.4千米内。
And I guess if you're riding in a cab, 1.4 kilometers is not very accurate.
如果你是乘出租车，1.4千米并不是很精确。
But in, kind of, space terms, that equates to around about 180 milliseconds.
但是就太空而言，这就相当于180毫秒。
We travel 1.4 kilometers in about 180 milliseconds. So, it's actually quite hard to do.
180毫秒内我们走了1.4千米，所以这其实是很难做到的。
Now, what I want to talk about here is space junk. We've talked a lot during this talk about,
我接下来想说的是太空垃圾。我们前面已经谈了很多，
you know, how we want to launch really frequently, every 72 hours, and all the rest of it.
关于我们想要每72小时发射一次火箭等等。
However, I don't want to go down in history as the guy that put the most amount of space junk in orbit.
然而，我不想因为把最多的太空垃圾送入轨道而被载入史册。
This is kind of the industry's dirty little secret here,
这其实是航天工业里的一个肮脏的小秘密，
what most people don't realize is that the majority of space junk by mass is not actually satellites, it's dead rockets.
大部分人其实没有意识到，主要的太空垃圾其实并不是卫星，而是火箭的残骸。
Because as you ascend to orbit, you have to shed bits of the rocket to get there, with the battle of physics.
因为当你进入轨道时，你就需要把火箭的部分脱离掉，这又是物理。
So I'm going to give a little Orbital Mechanics 101 here, and talk about how we go to orbit,
这里我给大家讲一下轨道力学，聊聊我们怎么进入轨道，
and how we do it really, really differently from everybody else.
以及我们的做法跟其他人公司有什么不同。
So the second stage cruises along and then we separate off a thing at the top called the kick stage,
第二级在往前飞行，然后顶部的补充加速级会脱落，
but we leave the second stage in this highly elliptical orbit.
接着第二级留在这个椭圆形的轨道上。
And at the perigee of the orbit, or the lowest point, it dips into the Earth's atmosphere and basically burns back up.
在轨道的近地点或者说最低点，它就会进入地球大气层，然后燃烧殆尽。
So now we're left with this little kick stage, that white thing on the corner of the screen.
现在我们就只剩下这个小的补充加速级，就是屏幕上角落里这个白色的东西。
It's got its own propulsion system, and we use it to raise and trim the orbit and then deploy the spacecraft.
它有自己的推进系统，我们用它来抬高位置，修正轨道然后发射出航天器。
And then because it's got its own engine, we put it into a retro orbit, put it back into a highly elliptical orbit,
因为它有自己的引擎，我们可以让它回到制动轨道上，再回到这个椭圆形的轨道上，
reenter it into the atmosphere and burn it back up, and leave absolutely nothing behind.
然后把它送进大气层烧掉，这样就不会留下任何垃圾。
Now everybody else in the industry is just downright filthy, they just leave their crap everywhere out there.
现在航天工业的其他公司，他们的做法都很下作，他们把剩下的垃圾扔的到处都是。
So I want to tell you a little bit of a story, and this is going to date me,
我还想给你们讲一个小故事，你们可以以此确定我的年纪了，
but I went to a school at the very bottom of the South Island in New Zealand,
我上的是新西兰南岛最南端的一所学校，
tiny little school, and we had a computer not dissimilar to this one.
那是个很小的学校，有一台跟这个差不多的电脑。
And attached to that computer was a little black box called a modem,
电脑上还有一个小的黑盒子叫做调制解调器，
and every Friday, the class would gather around the computer and we would send an email to another school in America
每个周五，全班人会聚集到电脑旁边，然后向美国的另一所学校发送一封邮件，
that was lucky enough to have the same kind of setup, and we would receive an email back.
如果走运的话，他们刚好有跟我们相同的设置，我们就会收到回复的邮件。
And we thought that was just incredible, absolutely incredible.
我们那时觉得这十分了不起，真的非常了不起。
Now I often wonder what would happen if I traveled back in time and I sat down with myself
而现在我常常会想，如果我穿越时空回到那个时候，跟我自己坐在一起，
and I explained all of the things that were going to occur because of that little black box connected to the computer.
如果我解释了这个小黑盒子因为跟另外一台电脑的连接，接下来将会发生什么事，那会怎么样。
You would largely think that it would be complete fantasy.
你们很可能会觉得那一定很神奇。
But the reality is that is where we are right now with space.
而实际上，我们在太航空事业上已经达到了这样的水平。
We're right on the verge of democratizing space, and we have essentially sent our first email to space.
我们就在把太空变得大众化的边缘，而且已经把第一封邮件发到了太空。
Now I'll give you some examples. So last year, we flew a small satellite for a bunch of high school students who had built it.
我再给大家举几个例子。去年，我们帮几个高中生把他们自己制作的小卫星发射到了太空中。
And the high school students were studying the atmosphere of Venus.
这些高中生正在研究金星的大气层。
Those are high school students launching their own satellite.
这些高中生已经在发射他们自己的卫星了。
Another great example, there's a number of really big programs right now
另一个很好的例子是，现在有很多大的项目，
to place large constellations, of small satellites in orbit to deliver internet to every square millimeter on the planet.
正在往星系的轨道上放置大型卫星群，想让这个星球的每一平方毫米都连接上因特网。
And for pretty much everybody in this room, that's just handy, because we can stream Netflix anywhere we want.
对在这个房间里的很多人来说，这是非常简单的，因为我们可以在任何地方看网飞的直播。
But if you think about the developing countries of the world,
但想想看世界上那些发展中国家，
you've just disseminated the entire knowledge of the world to every single person in the world.
你们正向世界的每一个人传播着关于世界的所有知识。
And that's going to have a pretty major effect. Thanks very much.
这会对他们产生非常重大的影响。谢谢大家。
