Modern inventions have sped up people’s lives amazingly. Motor cars cover a hundred miles in 【小题1】(little) than an hour, aircraft cross the world within a day, and computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed【小题2】(seem) never ending.

All this saves time, 【小题3】at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling 【小题4】(know) as jet lag: our bodies feel that they have been left behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long on computers results in 【小题5】(pain) wrists and fingers.

What do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax. In today’s fast-paced life, we find【小题6】 difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone 【小题7】we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting 【小题8】(imagine) take us into another world.

There was a time when some people’s lives 【小题9】(go) on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. We might envy a lifestyle like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to make 【小题10】(tool) from wood and stone.

Delivering Food by Drone

A Singapore restaurant plans to use drones(无人机)to transport food and drinks 【小题1】 the kitchen to a wait station near customers’ tables.

Infinium Robotics, the Singapore company that’s developing the drones for restaurant chain Timbre, has spent the past two weeks testing the technology at the restaurant before it opens each night for business and hopes to have it in place by the end of the year.

But how does the drone know where to land? What if someone bumps into the drone or is standing in its way? "There’s no chance at all 【小题2】 it will hit anything," says Infinium Robotics chief executive Junyang Woon.

The drones automatically charge while 【小题3】 (wait)in the kitchen. 【小题4】 the chef puts an order on the drone, he hits a button on a keypad and the drone automatically flies to one of two wait stations. Sense-and-avoid technology 【小题5】 (build)into the drone won’t allow it to land at the wait station if anything is in its way. The drones 【小题6】 (equip)with sonar and an infrared sensor, too.

A waiter then removes the food or drink from the drone and hits a button 【小题7】 sends it back to the kitchen. The drones, weighing a little over five pounds, 【小题8】 carry just over four pounds of food. Infinium Robotics is working on a model that will carry twice as much food.

"Its job is to help the waiters to reduce some of their boring tasks," Woon said. "If they let the robots do the job, they can concentrate on interacting with customers to bring about 【小题9】 (high)customer satisfaction and dining experience."Since it drew recent media attention, Woon 【小题10】 (hear)from resorts and restaurants in 10 countries, including the United States.

The American space agency, NASA, 【小题1】 (release) its latest plan to place the first humans on the moon since 1972. The 【小题2】 (update) information on the Artemis mission renews NASA’s promise 【小题3】 one of the astronauts will be a woman.

“We’re going back to the moon for 【小题4】 (science) discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement Monday.

NASA’s moon mission is part of 【小题5】(it) Artemis plan. It will use NASA’s newest rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS. The astronauts are to travel on NASA’s Orion spaceship.

Three projects 【小题6】 (compete) to build a moon lander 【小题7】 will transport two astronauts to the moon from the Orion spaceship. The competitors are all private companies, Blue Origin, SpaceX and Dynetics.

Artemis 1 will send a spaceship around the moon in 2021. It will not use 【小题8】 human crew. Artemis II is to send astronauts around the moon in 2023. Artemis III will land on the lunar surface in 2024 and remain for a week. NASA plans to have the astronauts 【小题9】 (leave) the lander to collect soil and rock, search for water and other resources and carry 【小题10】 experiments.

NASA says the plan will cost $28 billion dollars over a period of five years.