《参考消息》读者译文大赛10月8日截止了，作为忠实读者，我不揣冒昧，尝试了一回，是否能获奖并不是唯一目的，重要的在于参与。投入40多个小时的翻译使我体会到了翻译的不易，也使我度过了紧张而充实的四天。我9月14日寄出译文。

 

  One small step back to where we started

The Apollo missions were supposed to reveal the truth about the Moon. In fact, they taught us about the Earth – and ourselves

Mark Mason

“我们发现的是地球”

                             ——纪念阿波罗探月工程40周年

 

阿波罗系列计划的本意是揭示月球的真相，而事实上，登月计划使我们了解了地球和我们自身。

马克·梅森

 In July 1969, soon after their return from the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were shown footage of the world’s reaction to the lunar landing. They saw the US newscaster Walter Cronkite wiping away his tears; people gathered around televisions from China to Brazil; pavements outside TV shops crammed as people watched in awe. Aldrin turned to Armstrong. “Neil,” he said, “we missed the whole thing”.

1969年7月，就在内尔·阿姆斯特朗和巴兹·阿尔德林从月球返回不久，他们看到了登月行动引起世界反响的电视片段。看到美国电视新闻主持人沃尔特·克朗凯特拭泪的镜头；看到中国人和巴西人聚集在电视前的情景；看到电视机销售店前人们表情敬畏地围观、人行道水泄不通的场景，阿尔德林转身对阿姆斯特朗说：“内尔，我们错过了整个事件。”

That comment (reminiscent of George Harrison’s complaint that the Beatles felt left out because “We were the only people who never got to see the Beatles”) reveals the surprising truth about the Apollo missions: they weren’t about the Moon. They were about the Earth.

这句评论揭示了阿波罗系列登月计划令人惊讶的真相：登月任务与月球无关，而与地球有关（这不免使人想起了披头士乐队的乔治·哈里逊的抱怨，他说披头士感觉到被遗漏了，因为“我们是唯一从来不曾看过披头士演出的人。” ）。

The clues had been there from the start, when the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to leave their home planet’s orbit. Orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968, fulfilling dreams as old as mankind itself, their real wonder was not at the dead grey planet beneath them, but at the vibrant blue globe in the distance. The first three men to see the Moon up close soon realised — with a much deeper sense of reverence — that they were the first three men to see the Earth from a distance. Witnessing an earthrise made them feel humble. They read the opening chapters of Genesis to a worldwide audience of millions, signing off with, “Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

从一开始，当阿波罗8号搭载人类第一批宇航员离开“故乡”——地球轨道的时侯，线索就已明了。1968年圣诞节那天，宇航员们实现了人类自诞生之日起的梦想——沿着月球轨道运行！他们真正感到神奇的不是那死寂灰色的月球，而是那遥远的生机勃勃的蓝色地球。第一批三名宇航员看到月球近在咫尺的时候立刻充满了一种深深的崇敬之情，他们意识到，他们是人类首次从遥远的地方看到地球的人。目睹地球从月球的地平线上升起，他们感觉到了人类的渺小和卑微。他们向全球数百万电视观众朗读圣经《创世纪》的开篇，结束语是“祝所有生活在美丽地球上的人们圣诞节快乐，愿主保佑你们。”

 Over the next four years, Apollo taught us what it means to be human: in a word, restless. Curiosity is never satisfied, it merely finds new targets. Quite how quickly the shift can occur was learnt by Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the Moon (and the first to fall over on it). Once Armstrong and Aldrin had claimed the prize, no one was interested in Apollo 12. Conrad later appeared in an American Express advert of famous Americans nobody recognised. (Others included Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny.) Yet in many ways Conrad’s was the most interesting Apollo mission of all. His fellow moonwalker, Al Bean, never the most naturally gifted astronaut, compensated with sheer hard work. Finally standing on the lunar surface, he threw his silver Nasa badge into the distance, knowing that the moonwalk had earned him a gold one. But as they flew back to Earth, he turned to Conrad and admitted disappointment in the Moon itself: “It’s kind of like the song Is That All There Is?” Another timeless truth: achievements themselves aren’t what count, it’s the fact that you worked for them.

在接下来的四年岁月里，阿波罗登月计划告诉了我们，究竟它对人类而言意味着什么：一句话，探索永无止境。人类的好奇心永远不会满足，它仅仅促使我们发现新的目标。皮特·康拉德是在月球上行走的第三个宇航员（也是第一个摔倒在月球上的宇航员），他十分清楚光荣转瞬即逝。阿姆斯特朗和阿尔德林已经获得了人类首次登月的殊荣，没有人对其后的阿波罗12号感兴趣了。康拉德后来出现在美国运通信用卡广告上，该广告都是一些无人知晓的著名美国人（其他人包括梅尔·布兰克，为兔八哥配音者）。其实在很多方面，康拉德是所有阿波罗探月任务中最有趣的人。他的登月伙伴艾尔·宾并不是一个天才的宇航员，靠的是以勤补拙。宾最终站在了月球的表面，他将银色的美国国家航空和宇宙航行局徽章扔向远处，他知道月球行走就已经为他赢得了一枚金质的徽章。但当阿波罗12号的宇航员返回地球时，宾转身对康拉德说，真正到了月球其实挺失望。“就像那首歌《不过如此》。”阿波罗探月计划启迪我们的另一个永存的真理是，成就本身并不值得夸耀，你为此而努力过就足矣。

When Bean returned to Earth he would sit in shopping malls, simply to marvel at the variety of human life. And he has never again complained about the weather: “I’m just glad there is weather.” As so often, a journey into the unknown had revealed more about the traveller’s home than about the destination.

宾返回地球后，常常坐在购物中心里，陶醉于形形色色的生活众生相。他不再抱怨天气了，“什么天气我都高兴。”生活常常就是这样，去未知地的行程本身比目的地更有意义。

Virtually every Apollo astronaut came back with a deep sense of the Earth’s fragility. Ed Mitchell, Moonwalker No 6: “When we see ourselves in this bigger perspective — call it the ET point of view, the God point of view — a shift takes place in your perception and you start to think quite differently.” Apollo 16’s Charlie Duke describes Earth as “hanging in space like a jewel”. “People are always asking what we discovered when we went to the Moon,” says Dick Gordon, of Apollo 12. “What we discovered was the Earth.”

事实上，每一个宇航员返回时都深深地感受到了地球的脆弱。第六位在月球上行走的爱德·米切尔说：“当我们发现自己身处如此恢弘辽阔的天际景观中时，恍如置身寰宇中的外星人或者上帝在巡视茫茫宇宙

——你的感知就会发生转变，你开始以完全不同的方式思考。”阿波罗16号宇航员查理·杜克描述地球“像悬挂在太空中的一颗宝石。”阿波罗12号的宇航员迪克·高登说，“人们总是问我们去月球上发现了什么，我们发现的地球。”

The discovery gave a big boost to the nascent Green movement. Sir Jonathon Porritt cites the “deep and lasting effect” that Apollo had on “many environmentalists — including me”. Friends of the Earth was founded in the same year that man first walked on the Moon. The inaugural Earth Day happened a year later. Everyone seemed to agree with Michael Collins’s thought as he splashed back down into the Pacific with Armstrong and Aldrin: “Nice ocean you got here, planet Earth.”

这一发现对正在兴起的绿色（环保）运动以巨大的激励。乔纳森·波利特爵士举例说，阿波罗探月对“很多环境保护主义者，包括我，有着深远的、持久的影响。”就在人类实现首次月球行走的同时，“地球之友”成立了。一年之后，地球日正式诞生。当迈克尔·柯林斯、阿姆斯特朗和阿尔德林三人的返回舱溅落在太平洋里时，他们感叹：“地球，你有多么棒的海洋啊。”每一个观众都感同身受。

 Politically, too, there was a shift. The Earth from space looks just like a map — except without the national borders. Collins remembers people of every nation saying to him, “‘We did it’ — it was a wonderful thing.” Ed Mitchell, on his way back from the Moon, realised that “the molecules of my body and of the spacecraft and of my partners were manufactured in some ancient generation of stars — and that was an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness”. Inspired by the landings, René Dubos coined the phrase “Think globally, act locally”. T minus zero for Apollo was T plus one for globalisation.

宇航员们的政治视野也发生了变化。从太空看，地球恰似一幅地图——一幅没有国界的地图。柯林斯记得每一个国家的人对他说“‘我们登月了’，这真是一件奇妙的事！”爱德·米切尔在从月球返回的路上这样想着“我的身体，我的宇宙飞船和我的伙伴们的分子结构都好像是古老的恒星生成铸就的，一种唯我独尊、气贯长虹、势不可挡的感觉油然而生。”受宇航员返回地球场景的启迪，瑞尼·杜波斯创造了一个短语“思维全球化，行为本地化。”阿波罗飞船发射的那一刻，便是世界迈向全球化的第一步。

 Yet despite the astronauts’ protestations that the Moon itself was a letdown, which of us, given the chance, wouldn’t want to go there? The Chinese are planning missions of their own, and the commercial investment being ploughed into space tourism proves just how much we yearn for new experiences. So much so that we resent anyone who dampens our excitement.

尽管宇航员声称：月球荒凉寂寞，令人失望，但如果有机会，我们谁不想去呢？中国人正制定他们的登月计划，投入太空旅游的商业投资源源不断，这足以证明，人们多么渴望新的体验。探月的热情如此高涨，谁要想泼凉水，没人乐意。

Pete Conrad used to say he was prouder of his work on the Skylab missions than his walk on the Moon. “Some people even get mad,” he said. “‘What do you mean, the Moon isn’t the biggest thing in your life?’ I say: ‘Well, it isn’t’. They think, ‘Well, it should be’. I say: ‘Why? I’m the guy that did this’.” Maybe life is one long “wet paint” sign: you don’t believe it until you reach out and touch.

皮特·康拉德常说他对于太空实验室的任务比月球上行走更感到骄傲。他说，“有人为此还生气，说‘你什么意思，登月不是你人生中最了不起的事？’我说，‘喔，不是。’他们认为，‘嗨，应该是。’我回答，‘哎呀，我是当事人。’”或许生活就是一块长长的“油漆未干”的警示牌，除非你伸手触摸了才知道究竟是怎么一回事。

 Certainly, Dave Scott, of Apollo 15, thought so. Standing on the Moon, he voiced his thoughts to Houston: “I realise there’s a fundamental truth to our nature: man must explore.” Home is never far from our thoughts, though. How many times have you looked forward for months to a holiday, only to find that on day three you’re already dreaming of your own bed? But when you return, the process starts all over again. This idea of life as a perpetual cycle seems particularly comforting in a recession. Even though we’ve overreached (and overborrowed), and been reminded of some home truths, we know that one day we’ll reach out once more.

阿波罗15号的宇航员戴维·司考特无疑就是这么想的。站在月球上，他向休斯顿（地面控制中心）吐露了心声，“我认识到我们的天性中有一条颠扑不破的真理：人类必须探索。”

尽管家始终令我们魂牵梦绕，但有多少次你期盼数月想去度假，可就在度假的第三天你就已经梦想回家躺在自己的床上。这样的过程周而复始。这种生活的理念就像一个永恒的循环周期，在经济衰退之时尤其令人温馨。即使我们因不自量力而品尝失败的苦果（比如借钱过多而负债累累），只要一想起家的真谛，我们知道终有一天我们将重振旗鼓。

When Bean retired from Nasa he became an artist. His paintings of the lunar landscape, which fetch tens of thousands of dollars, bear the lessons of his time as an astronaut. Just as he worked hard to reach the Moon, now he works hard to perfect his painting. “That’s what I tell myself when the colours don’t come out right or it hasn’t worked like I thought it would: ‘That’s why they call it art’.”

当宾从美国国家航空和宇宙航行局退休的时候，他成了一名画家。他的月球风景画获利数数万美元，那些绘画展示着宇航员生活带给他的智慧和经验。就像他为到达月球刻苦训练一样，如今他在画技上孜孜以求，精益求精。“当色彩无法表达我的内心或者作品与我心里构想的不吻合时，我会对自己说：‘这就是艺术’。”

Another of Bean’s thoughts sums up the very essence of the Apollo missions, indeed of all human travel: that it isn’t about where you’re going, it’s about who you are. “Everybody came back just more like I knew them. I think maybe success doesn’t change you as much as reveal you.”

宾的另一个想法总结了阿波罗探月的本质意义，其实也是所有人旅行的真谛：不在乎你去哪里，而在乎你是谁。“每一个人回来就更像我了解的他们一样，我想可能成功不会改变你，你还是原来的你。”

Which is why the greatest reason to celebrate this 40th anniversary isn’t scientific or environmental or political; it’s personal. The next time you go down a footpath just to see where it leads, or when the only thing that will stop your baby crying is taking it for a drive, remember the 12 men who stood on the Moon and looked at Earth. As T. S. Eliot put it:

庆祝阿波罗登月40年最伟大的理由无关科学，无关环境，也无关政治，而是关乎人性。如果你下次沿着一条小径走，仅仅想弄明白它通往哪里的时候，当仅有一种办法即带着你的宝宝开车兜风他才不哭的时候，请记住12名宇航员站在月球上注视地球的情景。正如T.S.艾略特写的一首诗那样：

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

我们永不停息地探索

我们探索的终点

将是我们新的起点

于是，我们第一次认识了

新的起点