Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 15 views

    BBC Learning English 6 Minute English Day-Trip With A Difference

    Uploaded by

    Asefeh Kiani
    1) The document discusses day trips to space where private companies are offering tickets for $200,000 to travel on a suborbital trip to the edge of space. 2) The trips involve being carried up to 50,000 feet by a launch aircraft called White Knight 2, then firing rockets to travel up to 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. 3) Passengers would experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from space during the 2.5 hour trip before gliding back down.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    BBC Learning English 6 Minute English Day-Trip With A Difference

    Uploaded by

    Asefeh Kiani
    15 views4 pages
    1) The document discusses day trips to space where private companies are offering tickets for $200,000 to travel on a suborbital trip to the edge of space. 2) The trips involve being carried up to 50,000 feet by a launch aircraft called White Knight 2, then firing rockets to travel up to 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. 3) Passengers would experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from space during the 2.5 hour trip before gliding back down.

    Original Title

    4_5764867780872505477

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    1) The document discusses day trips to space where private companies are offering tickets for $200,000 to travel on a suborbital trip to the edge of space. 2) The trips involve being carried up to 50,000 feet by a launch aircraft called White Knight 2, then firing rockets to travel up to 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. 3) Passengers would experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from space during the 2.5 hour trip before gliding back down.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    15 views4 pages

    BBC Learning English 6 Minute English Day-Trip With A Difference

    Uploaded by

    Asefeh Kiani
    1) The document discusses day trips to space where private companies are offering tickets for $200,000 to travel on a suborbital trip to the edge of space. 2) The trips involve being carried up to 50,000 feet by a launch aircraft called White Knight 2, then firing rockets to travel up to 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. 3) Passengers would experience 5 minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth from space during the 2.5 hour trip before gliding back down.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 4

    BBC Learning English

    6 Minute English Page | 1

    BBC Learning English 6 Minute English


    Day-trip with a difference
    Call um: Hello, I’m Call um Robertson, welcome to Six Minute English. With me
    today is Neil Ed geller. Hello Neil.

    Neil: Hi Callum.

    Call um: Now in today’s programme we’re going to be looking at day-trips, but
    not your average kind of day-trip. First Neil, can you explain what we mean by
    a day-trip.

    Neil: Sure, a day-trip is like a short holiday. You go somewhere and come back
    on the same day.

    Call um: Yes, when I was a child I remember we used to go on day-trips to the
    beach or day-trips to the forest. What about you Neil, did you or do you go on
    day-trips?

    Neil: When I was a kid I lived in Canada and we often had visitors and we took
    them to local places of interest on day-trips, for example Niagra Falls.

    Call um: Wow, that’s a great place for a day trip. Our topic today is all about a
    day-trip that is literally out of this world. The day-trips I’m talking about are
    into space.

    If you’ve ever dreamt of being an astronaut, now you can make that dream
    come true. Provided you can afford it!

    Before we hear more about this, let’s have this week’s question. Now we’re
    talking about space, so it’s a space related question for you Neil, which planet
    is generally, is mostly the closest to Earth,

    is it: a: Mars, b: Venus or c: Jupiter

    Neil: Er, it’s Mars isn’t it?


    Call um: OK, Well we’ll find out if you’re right at the end of the programme.
    Page | 2
    Now a company is selling tickets for day-trips to space. They’re building
    Special craft to do this and one of these was revealed to the public earlier this
    year. We’re going to listen to BBC reporter Rajesh Mirchandani with some
    more details but before we do here’s some of the vocabulary you’ll hear. First
    ‘glimpse’, ‘glimpse’, tell us about this word Neil.

    Neil: ‘Glimpse’ is a word which means to see something, but to see it only for a
    short time or not completely. It can be a verb, or a noun. You can ‘glimpse
    something’ or you can ‘catch a glimpse of something’.

    Call um: And one more expression to look out for, ‘under-wraps’, ‘under-
    wraps’, Neil?

    Neil: If something is ‘under-wraps’ it means it is secret, it has not been shown


    to the public.

    Call um: Okay, so you’ll hear those two expressions in this report. Also, listen
    out for the answer to this question. How high above earth will the actual
    spaceship travel?

    RAJESH MIRCHANDANI

    After four years secret development in California’s Mojave Desert, now the
    first public glimpse of White Knight 2, the hardware designed to take paying
    passengers into space.

    But this isn’t the spaceship, that’s still unfinished and under wraps. This is the
    launch aircraft that will carry the spaceship to 50,000 feet from where it fires
    its own rockets and climbs to 62 miles above the Earth.

    Call um: So Neil, let’s answer the distance question first. How high above the
    Earth will the actual spaceship travel?

    Neil: It’ll be 62 miles. Which is about 100 km.

    Call um: So actually, for a day, trip, it’s not really that far, is it? Now there was
    also mention of another distance, 50,000 feet, what was that?
    Neil: Well there are two parts to the spacecraft. There is an aircraft, which is
    what was revealed, and this plane is used to carry the actual spaceship. So the Page | 3
    plane carries the spaceship to 50,000 feet, which is about 15km, and then the
    spaceship launches from there and goes up to 62 miles.

    Call um: And what do we know about the spaceship itself?

    Neil: Well not that much as that is what is still ‘under-wraps’, that’s still secret.

    Call um: Ok, now Neil, would you fancy this day-trip? Would you fancy going
    up into space?

    Neil: One question, an important one. How much does it cost?

    Call um: Well you can book a ticket for this space trip, this day-trip to space,
    for only $200,000!

    Neil: Well, err, no that is my answer!

    Call um: I think it would depend on what you get for your money. What do you
    get for $200,000? Let’s have a listen to Rajesh Mirchandani who can tell us a
    bit about that.

    RAJESH MIRCHANDANI

    The two-and-a-half hour sub-orbital trip offers five minutes of weightlessness


    and stunning views before gliding back down.

    Call um: So the whole trip takes two and a half hours and that includes 5
    minutes of weightlessness and stunning views. ‘Weightlessness’, can you
    explain that Neil.

    Neil: It’s when you are floating in the air. If you’ve seen films of astronauts in

    Spaceships they just float around of course because there is no gravity. They
    are weightless. So that’s one experience you’d have on the trip,
    weightlessness.

    Call um: And stunning views. That was something else that was mentioned,
    stunning views, meaning fantastic. Personally I think that would be an
    amazing thing to see, to see the Earth from a great distance. I think if I had that
    money to spare, I’d take the trip. Neil, would you?
    Neil: No. I don’t like flying anyway!
    Page | 4
    Call um: OK, so that would be, probably you could look at it on television, so
    there you go. Well that’s about all we have today, before we go though, the
    answer to this week’s question. Which planet is mostly closest to Earth? Neil,
    you said …..

    Neil: I said Mars.

    Call um: It’s actually Venus. Venus is actually closest to Earth for most, for
    most time. So hard luck on that one. Well time for us to go, do join us again for
    more 6 Minute English.

    You might also like

    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy