anglais vers français Technique / Génie Industrie aérospatiale / aviation / espace linguistique sémantique

“When landing tail first, we can’t just go straight down, as we came straight up when we took off—the air would burn us up. Instead, we have to spiral around through the atmosphere under controlled flight, so we slip in gradually. Do you understand?”


le vaisseau cargo va amorcé sa descente depuis sa position orbitale, non pas pour se poser mais afin de se positionner de façon à ce que le flux des réacteurs détruise tout ce qui ce trouve en-dessous. Il ne s'agit donc pas du train d'atterrissage.
Voici la procédure telle que décrite plus haut dans le texte : “All right, we have an orbit to figure. I’ve already set the mountain’s planetary coordinates into the computer. Astrogator, I need a descent path that will take us tail down on top of it. I want to come in fast at a low approach angle, keeping the body of the planet between the mountain and us until the last possible moment. The less time they have in which to see us coming, the less chance they’ll have to react. Another feature of the orbit: retrofire out of our present orbit should also come at a time when we’re out of their line of sight. Can you do all of that?”

et les suites techniques : Dev watched the chronometer on the board in front of her tick off the seconds and, at the proper moment, hit the switch for retrofire. The internal acceleration was only about one peegee, but nonetheless, after several hours of weightlessness, it was a heavy feeling, and most unpleasant.
Foxfire drifted slowly surfaceward. At first, there was little for Dev to do; the ship was committed to its course and the atmosphere through which they were traveling was still so thin there was no appreciable turbulence. But after twenty minutes they began encountering crosscurrents, and Dev’s job of piloting truly began. It was a delicate business, keeping upright while they fell with all the gracefulness of a rock.
Dev knew Larramac, for all his boasting, would never have been able to manage this. No matter how skilled he was with an airplane, the aerodynamic differences between that and a spaceship were overwhelming. Planes had wings, and were designed to cooperate with air currents, using them for buoyancy. Spaceships were bullet-shaped, owing to the discovery that hyperspace was a viscous medium; they were streamlined to pass through hyperspace with minimal resistance, but merely tolerated atmospheric conditions. They were kept upright by gyros and, very occasionally, short blasts from side stabilizing jets.