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.
就在幾天前，我們一行人剛從太空探索技術(shù)公司回來并利用下午的休假去看了克里斯蒂夫·諾蘭的《星際穿越》。一句話，我們很喜歡。當(dāng)然，我們很少有機(jī)會出去玩，所以就算是去看《鴛鴦綁匪》這種爛片我們也是很開心的。
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?
就我個人來講，我十分欣賞這部電影，不過其中還是有些不精確的細(xì)節(jié)讓我不爽。第一條，也是我最看重的——選角。我想說的是，真的有必要讓每部航天題材電影都給馬修·麥康納、安妮·海瑟薇、喬治·克魯尼、桑德拉·布洛克、湯姆·漢克斯、凱文·貝肯這些俊男靚女去演嗎？我怎么可能期望自己長這么帥？我真想大喊一聲：我才5英尺5英寸高啊！就不能有人讓保羅·吉亞瑪提或是華萊士·肖恩這些其貌不揚(yáng)的演員去拍太空冒險大片嗎？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.
電影中倒是存在一些微小的瑕疵。（劇透預(yù)警?。┍热缯f，像美國國家航天局（NASA）這么大的政府機(jī)構(gòu)在電影中開會時就只有不到一打的人，這是說不過去的。還有，在很多電影中都描繪了讓飛船自旋獲得人工重力的場景，但堅忍號飛船的環(huán)狀結(jié)構(gòu)直徑實在太小了，要達(dá)到產(chǎn)生地球重力的轉(zhuǎn)速那船里的人都要轉(zhuǎn)吐了。最后再提一點(diǎn)，如果那個高級文明能創(chuàng)造一個書架結(jié)構(gòu)的四維時空立方體，那它們?yōu)槭裁床辉谏厦嫜b一個繪圖板呢？我知道用敲落書本、撥動手表指針、把塵土排成二進(jìn)制信息這樣的溝通方式更富戲劇性，但要解釋一個全新的引力統(tǒng)一理論的話，用方程式和圖表可比貌似隨機(jī)的二進(jìn)制數(shù)據(jù)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《星際穿越》還是把大部分東西都搞對了。影片中出現(xiàn)了很多相對論效應(yīng)的描寫（至少加利福尼亞理工學(xué)院的老同學(xué)是這么講的）。我對影片中許多面熟的宇航設(shè)備也很感興趣。影片中儲存我們后代胚胎的冷凍箱看起來就和國際空間站上的一模一樣（雖然我們沒在里面存放殖民外星用的遺傳物質(zhì)，不過存一點(diǎn)可能是個好主意）。堅忍號的半球形窗戶就像國際空間站上的穹頂窗，飛船上的許多控制面板讓我感覺好像回到了奮進(jìn)號航天飛機(jī)上。而且我們都懂的，愛的確能穿越時空。
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.
我尤其對其中男主角庫伯頻繁手動操縱飛船這點(diǎn)很感興趣。與自動化控制勢不可擋的現(xiàn)實世界相比，在電影中庫伯似乎每5分鐘就要接過操縱桿開始手動控制。這種舉動很明顯是在隱喻主角不顧一切地想要掌握住他們自己乃至全人類的命運(yùn)?！缎请H穿越》是對美國式自由精神的生動描繪，即我們都是通過自我選擇塑造命運(yùn)的自由人。與這種自由精神俱來的是責(zé)任感帶來的重負(fù)——看看布蘭德教授在決定人類命運(yùn)的徒勞斗爭中慘遭完敗后的落魄就能理解；但自由意志是美國式典型英雄（如探索者、開拓者）的必備特質(zhì)，是那些勇于接受挑戰(zhàn)并發(fā)揮自己的才華、堅韌和意志力反敗為勝的孤膽英雄們的人格特征——就像庫伯那樣。我們不像其他民族把集體成就或順從天命看得比爭取個人榮譽(yù)更重要，而是獨(dú)自承擔(dān)決擇所帶來的重負(fù)和回報。這種典型品德是美國民族精神的一部分，我們必須重視發(fā)揚(yáng)這種品質(zhì)去激勵下一代的“庫伯“開拓太空新疆域。
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.
當(dāng)然，《星際穿越》的另一個主題是講述父親與子女的親情。這一點(diǎn)在我看來也是真實可信的。
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，我參加完一次報告會后，穿著我的藍(lán)色NASA航天員飛行服回家。當(dāng)我到家已是深夜，在哄我4歲的兒子上床睡覺時，他抬頭看著我，問我是不是剛從太空回來。我說不是。然后他問：“那你馬上就要上太空嗎？”
“Not without you,” I replied sincerely.
“我?guī)阋黄鹑ァ！蔽艺嫘母嬖V他。
At first a look of reassured contentment came over his face only to be followed by the
furrowed brow of concern and worry.
他臉上露出欣慰滿足的神情，但馬上就皺起了眉頭。
“But I don’t have a flight jacket,” he said.
“可是我沒有自己的飛行服。”
I love that kid. I’d definitely fly into a black hole in order to save him.
我愛我的兒子，為了他我就是飛進(jìn)黑洞也愿意。
