Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
An American space company says a powerful new rocket
should be ready for a test launch by the end of next
year. The company is Space Exploration Technologies,
or SpaceX. Its new rocket is called the Falcon
Heavy. Company officials say it will be able to
transport satellites or spacecraft weighing up to
fifty-three metric tons into orbit. That load weight
is double the capacity of NASA space shuttles. The
space agency is retiring its shuttles after thirty
years. Elon Musk is the chief executive officer of
SpaceX. He says fifty-three metric tons is more than
the weight of a fully loaded Boeing 737 with one
hundred thirty-six passengers, luggage and fuel.
It's more payload capability than any space vehicle
in history, he says, apart from the Saturn Five.
NASA used Saturn Five rockets during its Apollo and
Skylab programs in the nineteen sixties and
seventies. A Saturn Five launched the Apollo 11
mission that landed the first humans on the moon in
nineteen sixty-nine. The rockets were removed from
service in nineteen seventy-three. But they remain
the most powerful ever built.Elon Musk says the
Falcon Heavy will be the second most powerful rocket
ever. He says it was designed to do more than carry
satellites and other equipment into space. He says
the rocket was designed to meet NASA's ratings for
human flight safety. So it could someday be used to
carry astronauts and other travelers into space. Mr.
Musk says the Falcon Heavy could also be used for
missions like carrying a robotic lander to collect
samples from Mars. He says a mission like that
requires a great amount of lift capability. The
lander has to reach Mars and still have enough fuel
to return to Earth. The first launch is planned from
the company's launch site at Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California. A launch from Cape Canaveral,
Florida, is expected in late twenty-thirteen or
fourteen. In time, SpaceX hopes to launch ten Falcon
Heavy rockets a year. It says the rocket should
reduce launch costs to about two thousand dollars a
kilogram. That is about one-tenth the cost of
carrying loads into orbit on a space shuttle. SpaceX
already has a billion-and-a-half-dollar deal with
NASA to use a smaller rocket to transport cargo to
the International Space Station. The rocket is the
Falcon 9, and the deal is for after the two last
shuttles -- Endeavour and Atlantis -- are retired
this year.For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn
Presutti. For more ways to learn American English
and stay informed every day, go to
voaspecialenglish.com from your computer or mobile
device.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
