Unit3 Tomorrow’s World單元學案

 european shuttle prototype lands safely 導讀：歐洲航空防務與空間公司“鳳凰號”航天飛機模型在瑞典成功試飛。sun, may 09, XXstockholm, sweden(瑞典首都-斯德哥爾摩) - an unmanned prototype of a european space shuttle glided safely back to earth on saturday after being dropped from nearly 8,000 feet up by a helicopter. guided by global positioning system satellites(全球定位衛星), the german-designed eads(歐洲航空防務與空間公司) phoenix was dropped by a heavy-duty helicopter over sweden at 9:45 a.m. and "landed perfectly" 90 seconds later on a test runway north of stockholm, a project spokeswoman said. "everyone here is ecstatic," said johanna bergstroem-roos, of the north european aerospace test range in kiruna, 770 miles north of stockholm. "this gives us wind in our sails." the phoenix shuttle, along with the ariane 5 rocket, represents the european space agency's hope for sending astronauts into space, but project managers concede a full-size version will not be ready until sometime between and 2020. the test flight was originally planned for friday but was postponed so technicians could finish analyzing data from an earlier test of the vehicle's onboard computers this week. the next step likely will be to drop the prototype from higher altitudes, with the help of a high-altitude balloon, bergstroem-roos said. the finished shuttle must be capable of gliding to land from an altitude of 80 miles, she said.situation 2: …as motorways become more and more clogged up with traffic, a new generation of flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. that is the verdict of engineers from the us space agency and aeronautical firms, who envision future commuters travelling by "skycar". these could look much like the concept skycar shown in the picture, designed by boeing research and development. however, such vehicles could be some 25 years from appearing on the market. efforts to build flying vehicles in the past have not been very successful. such vehicles would not only be expensive and require the skills of a trained pilot to fly, but there are significant engineering challenges involved in developing them. "when you try to combine them you get the worst of both worlds: a very heavy, slow, expensive vehicle that's hard to use," said mark moore, head of the personal air vehicle (pav) division of the vehicle systems program at nasa's langley research center in hampton, us. but boeing is also considering how to police the airways - and prevent total pandemonium - if thousands of flying cars enter the skies.