经济学人2019.5.18/Amazon’s boss reckons that humanity needs an HQ2
Free exchange | out there
自由交换|在那里
【关于out there，有道词典的英英解释有Out There was a short-lived science fiction television program broadcast on Sundays at 6:00 p.m.。这是一款节目？】
Amazon’s boss reckons that humanity needs an HQ2
亚马逊老板认为人类需要一个HQ2
词汇
Reckon/测算，估计；认为；计算
HQ2[head quarter总部，亚马逊的第二总部HQ2]
Jeff bezos wants humans to live in space. On May 9th the founder and boss of Amazon, who also runs Blue Origin, a private rocketry firm, unveiled plans for a lunar lander. “Blue Moon”, as it is called, is just one phase of a bold plan to establish large off-world settlements. It is a vision ripped directly from 20th-century science fiction. Having persuaded people to take other leaps of faith, from shopping online to placing his firm’s always-on listening posts in their homes, he could be just the person to convince millions to leave Earth. But it will take a unique economic pitch.
杰夫·贝佐斯希望人类能生活在太空中。5月9日，亚马逊的创始人兼老板，同时也是私营火箭公司Blue Origin（蓝色起源）的老板，公布了登月计划。“蓝月亮”，正如它的名字，只是一个大胆的计划的一个阶段，建立大规模的地球以外的定居点。这是一个直接取自20世纪科幻小说的愿景。从（让人们开始接受）网上购物到把他的公司的24h持续开放的意见箱放在用户家中（随时可以反馈意见），他已经说服人们进行了思想上的转变，（因此）他可能成为就是那个说服数百万人离开地球的人。但这需要一个独特的经济策略。
词汇
listening posts/听音哨；情报站
Unless Mr Bezos obtains the state-like power to order masses of people around, his plans will require émigré Earthlings to leave voluntarily. Their motives need not be entirely economic. The Puritans left Britain for America in search of freedom from religious persecution. Mr Bezos might well find recruits among unhappy minorities—or among deeply devoted believers in his vision for humanity. He is not an entirely implausible cult figure.
除非贝佐斯获得像国家一样的权力来命令周围的民众，否则他的计划将要求地球上的移民自愿离开。他们的动机不一定完全是经济上的。清教徒离开英国到美国寻求宗教迫害的自由。贝佐斯很可能会在不快乐的少数群体中找到志愿者，或者在对他的人性愿景深信不疑的人中找到志愿者。他不是一个完全不可信的邪教人物。
词汇
state-like/state有州、国家的意思，但是翻译给出的都是“国家一样的”
Émigré/【来自法语】（通常因政治原因移居外国的）流亡者，逃亡者
Earthlings/凡人，众生
Puritan/清教徒
Persecution/迫害
Recruit/招聘；新兵；新成员
Cult/狂热；异教团体；宗教信仰；信徒
Per his presentation, however, Mr Bezos’s cities will be home to millions: numbers demanding a cost-benefit proposition with mass appeal. People might line up if the costs or risks of staying on Earth were to rise—because of a deteriorating environment, say, or imminent collision with a massive asteroid. But there are problems with the notion of space settlements as doomsday arks. Even an Earth dramatically less habitable than it is now would be substantially more so than anywhere else in the solar system. Any technology that could conceivably be used to create huge, humanfriendly environments in space or on other planets could presumably be used at less expense on Earth. The logistics would be challenging, too. Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, who also operates a private space firm, aims to settle Mars to ensure humanity’s continuation as a species against an extinction-level event. But relocating a great number of people to a desolate planet millions of miles away is fantastically hard. He wants to build an interplanetary ship with a capacity of 100. Even one departing every minute would not keep pace with Earth’s population growth.
然而，通过他的演讲，贝佐斯的城市将成为数百万人的家园:这些人需要一个具有大众吸引力的成本效益主张。如果呆在地球上的成本或风险上升，比如由于环境恶化，或者即将与一颗巨大的小行星相撞，人们可能会排队等候。但将太空定居点视为“末日方舟”的想法存在一些问题。即使地球变得比现在更不适宜居住，其宜居程度也将大大超过太阳系的任何其他地方。任何可以在太空或其他星球上创造巨大的、对人类友好的环境的技术都可以在地球上以更低的成本使用。后勤也将是一个挑战。特斯拉的老板埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)也经营着一家私人太空公司，他的目标是在火星定居，以确保人类作为一个物种的延续不受灭绝级别事件的影响。但是，将大量的人迁移到数百万英里之外的一个荒凉星球上是非常困难的。他想建造一艘能容纳100人的星际飞船。即使每分钟就有一个人离开，也赶不上地球人口的增长。
词汇
Deteriorating/退化，恶化
Imminent/即将来临的；迫近的
Asteroid/小行星
Space cities might lure settlers by offering to make them rich. But if extraterrestrial settlements remained dependent on imports from Earth, then their cost of living would be astronomical, and the income paid by space work would need to be correspondingly high to provide residents with a generous level of welfare. That, in turn, would require export industries selling things to Earthlings that could not be made on Earth far more cheaply.
太空城市可能会通过让定居者变得富有来吸引他们。但是，如果外星定居点的物资仍然依赖从地球进口，那么他们的生活成本将是天文数字，太空工作所支付的收入将需要相应的高，才能为居民提供慷慨的福利。反过来，这将要求出口行业向地球人出售在地球上无法以更低的成本生产的产品。
词汇
Lure/诱惑；引诱
Extraterrestrial/地球外的
Astronomical/天文学的
Might such space niches exist? Mining extraterrestrial objects could be economical, but would provide a weak reason for mass habitation, since it could be done most easily and cheaply by robots. Service industries offer more potential. If life in space were to prove therapeutic in some way, then off-world sanitariums could turn a profit. Space tourism would create a steady demand for offworld labour. The space economy might also thrive as a hub for activities banned on Earth, such as human cloning. Once a viable source of exports was found, agglomeration could drive further growth as Earthlings sought their fortunes off-world, plying goods and services to workers in the export industries. There would be obstacles, not all related to survival. The laws governing space enterprise are murky. An Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits governments from asserting claims over extraterrestrial land and resources, but says they retain jurisdiction over their own crafts (in the manner of ships in international waters). An American law passed in 2015 gives companies the right to own whatever useful material they can harvest in space, though not all countries accept this. Tech bros who prefer asking forgiveness to begging permission are unlikely to be much impeded by such uncertainties.
这样的空间利基可能存在吗?开采地外物资可能是经济的，但会为大规模居住提供一个薄弱的理由，因为这可以由机器人这种最容易、最廉价的方式完成。服务业提供了更多的潜力。如果太空生活能在某种程度上证明具有治疗作用，那么远离地球的疗养院就能盈利。太空旅游业将创造大量的“地球外劳动”的稳定的劳动力需求。太空经济或许也会带来地球内禁止的活动蓬勃发展，成为这类活动开展的中心，比如克隆人。一旦找到一个可行的出口来源，随着地球人在世界之外寻找财富，为出口行业的工人提供商品和服务，这类非法活动可能会推动进一步的扩大。太空探索会有一些障碍，并非都与生存有关。管理太空事业的法律是模糊的。1967年签署的一项《外层空间条约》禁止各国政府对外星土地和资源提出主权要求，但表示各国政府保留对本国船只的管辖权(就像国际水域中的船只一样)。2015年通过的一项美国法律赋予公司拥有在太空中收集到的任何有用材料的权利，尽管并非所有国家都接受这一点。喜欢请求谅解而不是乞求许可的科技公司不太可能受到这种不确定性的阻碍。
词汇
Space niche/空间生态位[niche/壁龛]
Therapeutic/治疗的；治疗学的；有益于健康的
Sanitarium/疗养院；疗养所
Thrive/繁荣，兴旺；茁壮成长
Agglomeration/凝聚，结块；（杂乱的）一批，一群
Murky/黑暗的；朦胧的；阴郁的
Impede/阻碍；妨碍；阻止
Mr Bezos appears to have in mind something other than a trade-based interplanetary economy, however. His plans take for granted speedy technological progress of the sort that would enable large-scale mining and materials processing by autonomous robots, and construction of vast off-world habitats. The works of science fiction from which his vision borrows often assume the emergence of “fully automated luxury communism”, in which clever machines enable the emergence of a post-scarcity world.
然而，贝佐斯似乎考虑的不是以贸易为基础的星际经济。他的计划想当然地认为，快速的技术进步将使自动机器人能够大规模采矿和材料加工，以及建造广阔的外星栖息地。他的愿景所借鉴的科幻作品，往往假定出现了“完全自动化的骄奢的——主义”，在这种——主义中，聪明的机器使落后匮乏世界的（成为人类适宜居住地）出现成为可能。
词汇
interplanetary /太阳系内的；行星间的
Such advances might not just enable the settlement of space, but might be realisable only in space. The resource demands of a world where everyone can have everything they want would probably outstrip Earth’s material capacity. Space, however, holds a virtually unlimited supply of the raw materials needed for universal abundance. But intensive use of extraterrestrial resources on Earth could pose environmental hazards or nuisance costs that humans would lobby to prevent. And even nearly free resources would not enable 9bn people to live where and how they want. Not everyone can have an estate on the Californian coast.
这些科技的进步可能不仅使人类居住空间的问题得以解决，而且可能只有在太空中才能实现。地球上，每个人几乎有着想要一切他想要的资源的想法，这也许会超出地球的物资容量。然而，太空几乎拥有无限的原料供应，而这些原料是构成丰富的宇宙所必需的。但是，在地球上大量使用地球以外资源可能会造成环境危害或令人厌恶的浪费，而人类会游说阻止这些危害。即便是近乎免费的资源，也无法让90亿人过上他们想要的生活。并不是每个人都能在加利福尼亚海岸拥有房产。
词汇
Outstrip/超过；胜过；比…跑得快
Hazard/危险，风险；冒险的事；
Nuisance/ 讨厌的人；损害
Free enterprise
自由企业
Space, on the other hand, has plenty. In addition to its countless resource-rich rocks, it offers more than enough room to build whatever habitats, with whichever climates and vistas, are needed to satisfy humanity’s demands. In the context of the finitude of Earth, insatiable resource consumption seems wasteful, even obscene. But off-world, why be stingy? Given a choice between a cheek-by-jowl existence down here and indecent luxury up there, many might accept the risks of starting a new life in the heavens.
另一方面，太空有很多资源。除了无数资源丰富的岩石，它还提供了足够的空间来建造任何栖息地，无论气候和景色如何，都可以满足人类的需求。在地球有限的背景下，贪得无厌的资源消耗似乎是浪费，甚至是可憎的。但一旦脱离地球束缚，何必吝啬?如果要在这里过着紧凑型的生活和地球之外的奢侈的生活之间做出选择，许多人可能会接受在天堂开始新生活的风险。
词汇
finitude/有限；界限；限制
obscene/淫秽的；猥亵的；可憎的
stingy /吝啬的，小气的；
cheek-by-jowl/紧密地
In the 19th century Europeans streamed into America because wages were higher. They were high because of the continent’s extraordinary abundance—an abundance resulting from the mass deaths and displacement of indigenous people, but abundance nonetheless. The living that could be made on the near-inexhaustible supply of resource-rich land forced urban firms to pay high wages, lest workers left for the frontier. Space is a forbidding place for frail humans. But the final frontier may be the only one capable of providing humankind with endless material wealth.
19世纪，欧洲人涌入美国，因为工资更高。这些数字之所以高，是因为美洲大陆有着异常丰富的资源——这是由于大量土著人死亡和流离失所带来的物资丰富，但尽管如此，富饶就是富饶。人们可以选择过依靠几乎取之不尽的资源丰富的土地所能带来的生活，这便迫使城市企业支付高工资，以免工人离开城市去边疆。对于身体虚弱的人来说，太空是一个令人生畏的地方。但是，最后的疆域可能是能够为人类提供无尽物质财富的唯一疆域。
词汇
Indigenous/本土的；土著的；国产的；固有的
