Science and Technology Human spaceflight
科技 人类宇宙飞行
Fifty years have elapsed since a Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, lit the blue touchpaper on the era of manned spaceflight.
自从苏联宇航员尤里加加林点燃了载人航天时代开始的蓝色火绒线，五十年已经过去了。
Progress was rapid-only eight years separated Gagarin's flight from the infinitely more complicated mission that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon.
进步是飞快的，加加林飞行仅八年后，人类完成了更复杂的行动，将宇航员尼尔·阿姆斯特朗和巴兹奥尔德林送达月球表面。
Although the moon landings handed a temporary victory to America,
尽管登陆月球对美国来说只是一时的胜利，
the Soviet Union dominated manned spaceflight for the next decade,
苏联在接下来的十年之内控制了载人航天，
including some pioneering missions to the Salyut space stations to test the effects of long periods aloft and several extended missions to Salyut's successor Mir, in the late 1980s.
包括在礼炮号空间站上进行一些开拓性对于长时间悬浮的测试，还包括在八十年代后期在礼炮号接任者米尔号空间站上的任务。
Only with the rise of the Space Shuttle programme, beginning in 1981, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union a decade later, did America retake the crown.
只有在1981年开始的空间航天飞机项目，以及十年之后的苏联解体，才让美国取得了空间技术领域的桂冠。
Manned spaceflight is no longer a two-horse race.
载人航天领域不再是两匹马的比赛。
China entered it in 2003.
中国在2003年也加入了竞争。
A year later three privately financed suborbital missions were made in Mojave Aerospace's craft, SpaceShipOne.
2004年，三艘私人融资任务在的在莫哈韦航天飞船“太空船一号”上进行。
Rocketeering, though, has always been dangerous.
尽管火箭技术一直以来都是危险的。
Four missions have killed 18 astronauts between them.
四次任务已经导致18名宇航员身亡。
Two were Soviet (Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11) and two American (the shuttles Challenger and Columbia).
两次是苏联的火箭(联盟一号和联盟二号),两次是美国的火箭（挑战者号和哥伦比亚号)。
Other astronauts have died in accidents on Earth.
其余的宇航员是在地面事故中丧生的。
After the losses of Challenger and Columbia,
挑战者号和哥伦比亚号的事故之后,
America's shuttle fleet was grounded, which explains the big drop in missions following both accidents.
美国的飞船舰队也着陆了，这就解释了两次事故之后空间任务的大量减少。