'Not looking good right now': Starship likely to be lost at sea 2 weeks after epic 13th test flight, Elon Musk says

“现在看起来不太好”：埃隆·马斯克表示，两周前，星舰进行了第 13 次史诗般的试飞，两周后可能在海上失踪

It looks like Starship's two-week-long ocean adventure won't have a happy ending.

看来星舰为期两周的海洋探险不会圆满结束。

The SpaceX megarocket conducted its 13th test flight on July 24, lifting off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. Things went pretty well on Flight 13, especially for Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, known as Ship, which splashed down as planned in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.

7 月 24 日，SpaceX 巨型火箭于 进行了第 13 次试飞，从该公司位于德克萨斯州南部的星际基地发射升空。第13号飞行进行得相当顺利，尤其是星际飞船的上半部分，高达171英尺高（52米）的飞船，按计划溅落在西澳大利亚海岸的印度洋上。

In an unexpected first, Ship survived that homecoming, staying in one piece even after toppling over and hitting the waves. It remains intact still, and SpaceX is towing it toward shore in Western Australia to get a better look. But the ambitious effort is unlikely to succeed, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told us today (Aug. 7).

出乎意料的是，飞船即使倾覆且撞击海浪，仍然完好无损，成功挺过了首次返航。目前飞船仍保持完整形态，为进一步观察，SpaceX 正在将其拖往西澳大利亚海岸。但今天（8月7日），SpaceX创始人兼首席执行官埃隆·马斯克透露道，这项伟大工程恐怕难以成功。

"Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades," Musk wrote this afternoon via X, the social media site he owns.

今天下午，马斯克在他的社交媒体平台 X 上写道：“很遗憾，目前飞船的打捞工作进展不顺。尽管如此，我们还是成功获得了隔热罩和发动机关键部位的近距离照片，这将有助于未来的改进升级。”

He was responding to a SpaceX post from an hour or so earlier, which provided an update about the recovery effort and shared two photos and a video of the activities.

他这是在回复大约一个小时前SpaceX发布的帖子，该帖子通报了打捞工作的最新进展，并分享了两张照片和一段现场活动视频。

The recovery team has "been overcoming challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas as they attempt to guide the 52m long spacecraft to port," SpaceX wrote in the post.

其中写道，打捞团队“一直在克服重重挑战、抵抗日益恶劣的海况，努力将这艘 52m 长的飞船带回港口”。

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing about 408 feet (124 meters) tall when stacked. Both of its stages — Ship and the Super Heavy booster — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX thinks will revolutionize spaceflight.

星舰是迄今最大、推力最强的火箭，各级组装后总高度约408英尺（124米）。其中飞船和超重型助推器这两部分均可完全且快速重复使用，SpaceX 将其视为航天飞行改革的突破性成果。

A key enabler of rapid reuse is Ship's heat shield, which protects the vehicle during its downward trips through Earth's atmosphere. Musk has described heat shield development as perhaps the biggest challenge on Starship's road to operational flight — but that challenge may now be in the rearview mirror.

要实现快速重复使用，关键因素是飞船的隔热罩，它可以在飞船重返大气层时保护飞行器。马斯克将隔热罩的开发称为星舰迈向实用化道路上的最大挑战，但如今，这一挑战或许已成为过去式。

"I don't want to jinx it or anything, but I think I'd consider the heat shield problem solved at this point," Musk said on Tuesday (Aug. 4), during SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings call.

周二（8 月 4 日），马斯克在 SpaceX 首次季度财报电话会议上表示：“我不想当乌鸦嘴，但事到如今，我想隔热罩问题算是解决了。”

It's no surprise that Starship and Flight 13 came up in that call. The megarocket is key to SpaceX's ambitious future plans, which include assembling and operating a million-satellite AI constellation in Earth orbit.

那场电话会议会提及星舰和第13次试飞并不奇怪。这枚巨型火箭是 SpaceX 伟大计划的关键，该计划包括在地球轨道上组装并运营一个由百万颗卫星组成的人工智能星座网。

Flight 13 was similar to previous Starship test missions; it was a suborbital jaunt that ended with Super Heavy coming down in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship landing in the Indian Ocean.

第13次试飞类似于之前的星舰测试任务，都是一次亚轨道飞行，以超重型助推器坠落在墨西哥湾、飞船溅落于印度洋告终。

There was a big milestone, however, in addition to Ship's unexpected transition to seagoing vessel: During its time in space, the upper stage deployed 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites, the bigger, next-gen variant of SpaceX's broadband spacecraft.

然而，除了飞船意外变成海船之外，此次任务还迎来一个重大里程碑。太空中，飞船上半部分部署了 20 颗可正常运行的星链 V3 卫星，这是 SpaceX 宽带卫星中体型更大的下一代型号。

These satellites quickly came back down to Earth on July 24, but Flight 13 was a vision of the future nonetheless. SpaceX wants to operate a constellation of 100,000 or so Starlink V3s, and this network will be lofted by Starship.

这些卫星已于7月24日迅速重返地球，但第13次试飞仍然展开了未来画卷。SpaceX希望运营一个星座网，由约10万颗星链V3组成，而该网络将由星舰送上太空。