The failed Skylab will come screaming home to earth in disappointment sometime next month, but it will fall we know not where. That precise information is beyond even the calculations of scientists and their computers.
失败的太空实验室将在下个月的某个时候，失望地发出巨大声响返回地球，但我们不知道它会落在哪里。这些精确的信息甚至超出了科学家和他们的计算机的计算范围。
The best they can tell us is that the space station, weighing 77 tons and as high as a 12 story buiding, will break into hundreds of pieces that will be scattered across a track 100 miles wide and 4,000 miles long.
能告诉我们的最好消息是，这个重达77吨、高达12层楼的空间站将分解成数百块碎片，散落在100英里宽、4000英里长的轨道上。
We are again exposed to one of those unexpected adventures, or misadventures, of science that atracts our attention from the boring routines of daily existence and encourages us to think a lot about man's future.
我们再次面临科学的一次意想不到的冒险或不幸，它将我们的注意力从日常生活的无聊日常中转移开，并鼓励我们思考人类的未来。
What worries Richard Smith, the Skylab' s director, is the "big pieces" that will come through the atmosphere. Two lumps, weighing 2 tons each, and ten, weighing at least 1,000 pounds each, will come in at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour and if they crash on land they will dig holes up to 100 feet deep.
太空实验室的负责人理查德·史密斯担心的是将穿过大气层的“大碎块”。每块重2吨的两块碎石以及每块至少重1000磅的十块碎块，将以每小时数百英里的速度进入，如果它们在陆地上坠毁，它们将撞击出100英尺深的深坑。
What worries us, with our lack of scientific knowledge and our quick imagination, is both the big and little pieces, although project officials say there is a very small chance that anyone will be injured by them.
由于我们缺乏科学知识和快速的想象力，我们担心的是大的和小的碎块，尽管项目官员表示，人受伤的可能性很小。
That's good to know, but it doesn't remove the doubts of the millions who still remember the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. That accident took place in 1979 in spite of what the officials had assured us as to the safely of the nuclear reactor.
知道这一点很好，但这并不能消除数百万仍记得三里岛核事故的人的疑虑。那次事故发生在1979年，尽管官员们向我们保证了核反应堆的安全。
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