经济学人下载:查尔斯·耶格尔将军(4)

The USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Muroc, now Edwards air force base, which he ran from 1962, offered a state-of-the-art simulator that covered every stage of a space flight, from take-off to landing. Applicants swarmed in, and a bare 1% made it, since even fine grades on paper cut little ice with him. Astronauts, like pilots, had to know the machinery they were riding in, how to fix it and how to get back safely, not rely on some bunch of engineers. Like him, they basically had to be mechanics. Over the years he became well-known, but it was an intermittent sort of fame. After the war he was celebrated as West Virginia's leading ace. After breaking Mach in 1947, hardly a month passed without some magazine running an article about him. 

穆洛克的美国空军航空航天研究飞行员学校，现在是爱德华兹空军基地，他从1962年开始经营，提供了一个最先进的模拟器，涵盖了太空飞行的每个阶段，从起飞到着陆。申请者蜂拥而至，只有1%的人通过了考试，因为即使是在纸上取得好成绩，他也不例外。宇航员和飞行员一样，必须知道他们乘坐的机器，如何修理，如何安全返回，而不是依靠一些工程师。和他一样，他们基本上都是机械师。多年来，他名声大噪，但这只是一种断断续续的名声。战后他被誉为西弗吉尼亚州的头号王牌。在1947年突破马赫数之后，几乎一个月过去了，就有杂志刊登了一篇关于他的文章。

In the 1960s, when he was running the research-pilot school, he once did 163 talks in a year. He was a draw at any air show and at the Indy 500, where several times he opened proceedings in the pace car, gunning it with joy. Still, people didn't match the name to the face, he thought, until he did the acDelco car-parts commercial on TV; and then when, in 1983, his Mach exploits appeared on cinema screens in “The Right Stuff”, the film of Tom Wolfe's book about the band of pilots. He had helped on the book, going through crash reports, which Wolfe kept getting wrong. As for the film, it was just entertainment, pretty much fiction, from Sam Shepard's dark handsome face to all those blue skies outside the windows. So when he was asked, as he was annoyingly often, whether he had the right stuff, as a test pilot and generally, he gave a downto-earth answer. Rather than being the most righteous, with the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment, as Wolfe wrote, he just knew all about his planes, and had worked his tail off learning it. A mechanic's answer which, as ever, hit the nail on the head. 

上世纪60年代，他在管理研究试点学校时，曾在一年内做了163次演讲。他在任何航展和印地500都是平手，很多次他都在这个赛场上宣布比赛开始，赛车随即飞奔而出。他想，直到他在电视上做了acDelco汽车零件广告，人们才把这个名字和脸配起来；然后在1983年，他的马赫战绩出现在电影屏幕“正确的东西”上，电影讲述的是沃尔夫关于一群飞行员的书。他帮助写了这本书，翻阅了事故报告，沃尔夫不断地出错。至于这部电影，从山姆·谢泼德那张黝黑英俊的脸到窗外那些蔚蓝的天空，简直就是娱乐，简直就是虚构。所以当他被问到，作为一名试飞员，他是否拥有合适的东西时，总的来说，他给出了一个朴实的回答。与其成为最正直的人，还不如用魔咒，反应，经验，冷静，在最后一个打哈欠的时刻把它拉回来，就像沃尔夫写的，他对他的飞机了如指掌，而且是竭尽全力地学的。一个机械师的回答，一如往常，一针见血。