When Sally Ride was ten years old, she had no idea that she would some day grow up to be one of America’s first woman astronauts. In fact, if you had asked her then what wanted to be, she would have said, “ I want to play shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers.” Sally collected baseball cards by the boxful, and she knew the name and batting average (擊球率)of every player in the National League.
But major league baseball didn’t seem much of a possibility for a girl, even an athletic one like Sally, so her father and mother talked her into taking tennis lessons when she was twelve. At first she hated to trade in her baseball bat for a tennis racket, but it wasn’t long before she started to win tournaments in her new sport. “ Tennis became much more fun when I started winning,” Sally remembers. Soon a row of trophies (獎牌)replaced her box of baseball cards, and tennis star Billie Jean King replaced Dodger shortstop Maury Wills as her sports idol.
Sally first became interested in the space program in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn orbited the earth in his Mercury space capsule. Sally was ten years old at the time, but she remembers the launch and the splashdown (掉落) as if they happened yesterday. The girl who used to memorize batting averages became a space fan. She quickly learned the name of every NASA astronaut(there were only eight of them in 1962), the date of every launch, and the name and number of every spacecraft from Freedom 7 to Skylab 3. She could tell you the speed of light (186,300 miles per second), the distance to the moon (238,860 miles), and the names of the three nearest stars( the Sun, Alpha Centauri, and Barnard’s Star).
By the time she was sixteen, Sally had decided to become an astrophysicist, a scientist who studies space. She had also become a nationally ranked tennis player. She remembers yawning(打哈欠) through an important tennis match on June 20, 1969, after staying up all night to watch Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. Sally lost the match.
As Sally got older, many of her friends started playing professional tennis. Some of them tried to talk her into quitting school to join them on the professional tennis circuit. But Sally said no. “ Black holes are more interesting to me than backhands,” she told them. Now she knows that she made the right choice, but in 1970 Sally had no way of knowing that NASA would open the space program to women.
小題1:At the age of twelve, Sally Ride ________.A.was interested in playing tennis
B.was persuaded into taking tennis training
C.began to become interested in space
D.decided to become an astrophysicist
小題2:Sally Ride lost the match on June, 1969 just because________.A.she was tired
B.she couldn’t decide whether to be an astrophysicist
C.she couldn’t decide whether to take part in a professional tennis circuit
D.she wasn’t interested in tennis
小題3:From the story we know that Sally ________.A.had been a professional baseball player
B.had never been a professional player
C.had never been a woman astrophysicist
D.wasn’t interested in space program
小題4:A capsule is ________.A.the name of the neareast star
B.a place where the American astronauts and the crew work
C.a place where astronauts and the crew are trained
D.a container of the crew and astronauts detached(分離) from a rocket
小題5:Which of the following is True according to the passage?A.According to the story, Sally Ride is a woman astrophysicist.
B.The ambition of becoming a woman astronaut was made in Sally’s childhood.
C.Freedom 7 and Skylab 3 are the names of the nearest stars.
D.Sally didn’t quit her schooling at the time as she knew sooner or later NASA would hire woman astronaut.
