清扫海洋，小伙有妙招
The path to innovation is not always a smooth, straight line.
创新之路并不总是一条平坦的直线。
In some cases, it's U-shaped.
有时候，它会是U形的。
In September, a 2,000-foot-long floating barrier, shaped like a U, was dispatched to the Great Pacific garbage patch between Hawaii and California, where roughly 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have formed a floating field of debris roughly twice the size of Texas.
今年9月，一个长2,000英尺、形状像U型的漂浮障碍物被派往夏威夷和加州之间的太平洋大垃圾带，在那里，大约1.8万亿片塑料碎片形成了一片漂浮的区域，面积大约是德克萨斯州的两倍。
Made of connected plastic pipes, the barrier was meant to catch and clean-up the plastic.
这道屏障是由连接的塑料管构成的，用来收集和清理塑料。
Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, the barrier has so far done some of what it was designed to accomplish.
这道屏障是博扬·斯莱特17岁时发明的，到目前为止，它已经完成了一些设计目标。
It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic.
它以风力和波浪推进的方式飞行，就像渴望吃塑料的u型吃豆人一样。
It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, sort of.
它在风中定位，捕捉并浓缩塑料。
But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel.
但是，正如现年24岁的斯莱特最近在他设计的beta测试仪上所发现的那样，塑料有时会从u形漏斗中漂移出来。
The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.
测试人员的另一个问题叫做System 001，上周，一个60英尺长的端部断了。
The first issue, Slat said, was likely due to the device's speed.
第一个问题，斯莱特说，可能是由于设备的速度引起的。
In a September interview, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow.
在9月的一次采访中，他说这台设备的平均速度约为每秒4英寸，他的团队现在得出结论，速度太慢了。
The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it.
而障碍的破裂则是由于建造材料的问题。
"Considering the things we have been able to prove in the past few months and considering the problems that we have faced, they seem quite solvable," he said.
他说:“考虑到我们过去几个月能够证明的事情，考虑到我们面临的问题，这些问题似乎是可以解决的。”
"I'm confident that the team will be able to design appropriate solutions for this and that we'll have the system back in the patch in a few months from now."
“我相信这个团队能够设计出合适的解决方案，并且我们将在几个月后让这个系统打好补丁。”
His team hopes to make the system fully operational sometime this year.
他的团队希望在今年的某个时候使该系统全面运行。
If the project succeeds, Slat's vision is to deploy a fleet of 60 more devices, projected to remove half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch's plastic within five years.
如果该项目成功，斯莱特的愿景是部署60多台设备，预计在五年内清除大太平洋垃圾带一半的塑料。
In this vision, one he has held since his teens, support vessels would act like ocean garbage trucks; ships would carry the plastics back to land, where they would be processed, recycled, and reused — not dumped back into the ocean.
在这个愿景中，他从十几岁起就有这样的想法:支持船只就像海洋垃圾车;船只将把这些塑料运回陆地，在那里进行加工、回收和再利用，而不是倾倒回海洋。
对于斯莱特发明的海洋清扫工具，朋友们有什么看法呢？欢迎给amber留言哦！
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