美国东部时间9月15日20时，SpaceX公司用猎鹰9号火箭发射载人龙飞船，将4名平民乘客送往太空，开展为期三天的绕地球之旅。这是SpaceX首次全民用、纯商业太空飞行，龙飞船上没有任何专业宇航员。

 

SpaceX has launched the world's first crew of “amateur astronauts” on a private flight to circle Earth for three days.

太空探索公司SpaceX日前将全球第一批“业余宇航员”送上太空，他们将乘坐私人太空飞船环绕地球飞行三天。

 

Wednesday night's successful launch marked the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism. It's the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk's space company and the first time a rocket streaked¹ toward orbit with a crew that contained no professional astronauts.

9月15日晚SpaceX太空船的成功发射标志着太空旅游业有史以来最野心勃勃的一次飞跃。这是埃隆·马斯克的太空公司的首次私人包机旅行，也是火箭第一次将没有专业宇航员的机组人员送入轨道。

 

Leading the flight is Jared Isaacman, 38, who made his fortune with a payment-processing company he started in his teens. Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, following flights by Virgin² Galactic's Richard Branson and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos in July.

这次飞行的领头人是38岁的贾里德·艾萨克曼，他十几岁就创立了支付处理公司并靠此发家致富。艾萨克曼是今夏继维珍银河公司的理查德·布兰森和蓝色起源公司的杰夫·贝索斯之后第三位进行太空旅行的亿万富翁。

 

Isaacman is joined by Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a childhood cancer survivor³ who works as a physician assistant at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman has pledged $100m of his own money to the hospital and is seeking another $100m in donations.

同行的还有29岁的海莉·阿西诺，这位童年曾患癌症的幸存者在美国田纳西州孟菲斯市的圣犹大儿童研究医院做助理医师。艾萨克曼承诺向这家医院捐赠1亿美元的个人财产，而且正在筹集另外1亿美元捐款。

 

Also along for the ride are Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona.

一起乘坐飞船的还有42岁的克里斯·森布罗斯基和51岁的西恩・普罗科特。克里斯是华盛顿州埃弗里特市的一名数据工程师，西恩是亚利桑那州坦佩市的一名社区学院教育工作者。

 

Arceneaux is set to become the youngest American in space and the first person in space with a prosthesis, a titanium rod in her left leg.

海莉将成为进入太空最年轻的美国人，以及首位携带假体进入太空的人。她的左腿植入了一块钛合金人工骨材。

 

The passengers will spend three days orbiting Earth at an unusually high altitude of 357 miles (575km) – 100 miles (160km) higher than the International Space Station – before splashing down off the Florida coast this weekend.

他们将在357英里（575千米）的惊人高度绕地球飞行三天，并于本周末在佛罗里达海岸着陆。这个飞行高度比国际空间站还要高100英里（160千米）。

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