早晨，你在自己的田园大宅中用完早餐后，从容地坐进飞往市中心办公区的公交直升机，迎着早晨八九点钟的太阳，一路美景尽收眼底……

The place is a lovely meadow surrounded by deep woods on a hilltop overlooking a beautiful lake in the Catskill Mountains 120 miles from New York. It is quarter past eight in the morning, and you are about to commute1 to your office in the city. Yet there is no paved highway nearer than fifteen miles, and it is fifty to a railroad station.

Now you hear a low hum, and over the horizon appears a flying machine.2 You press the button of a box nearby and a radio signal flashes to the machine. The aircraft, looking oddly like a horizontal electric fan, drones3 toward you. When the pilot is directly overhead, all forward movement of the machine ceases and it descends vertically until the cabin door is within a foot of the ground4.

On the machine's gray side is painted Helicopter Express to New York5. The door opens and you step inside; you nod a greeting to the co-pilot who takes your commutation ticket6, you wave to those of the other fifteen passengers you know. The door closes and the helicopter immediately ascends vertically to 1000 feet. Now it darts7 ahead, quickly attaining a forward speed of 140 miles an hour.

Fifty minutes later the helicopter bus hovers over a midtown New York building, descends slowly to alight on a roof space some sixty yards square.8 You go into the building, take the elevator to the street below, and walk half a block to youroffice. Not quite an hour has elapsed since you drank your morning coffee in your home.

Does this sound like a fantasy imagined by science fiction writers? If so, I can assure you, as a practical aeronautical9 engineer, that such a trip is neither fantastic nor impractical. I am convinced that a helicopter bus service is not only practicable but, in fact, inevitable.10

In the air age of tomorrow, the manufacture, sale, and upkeep of the direct-lift machine will become a billion-dollar industry just as the automobile industry. There will be many startling changes in our way of life.

Most important is that hundreds of thousands of people can return to the health and beauty of the countryside.11 Millions of acres of hitherto inaccessible land will be developed with small homes for medium- or low-income groups. A cheap, swift helicopter bus service will ferry these people to and from their work. Suburbs will include ten thousand or more square miles. Real-estate values will come within the reach of average incomes12, and the people will literally return to the good earth.

And a new type of architecture ?nbsp;perhaps a house with a flat roof and a pleasantly designed helicopter hangar to one side of it13, so that you have only to wheel the machine a few feet to take off. Hotels in beautiful surroundings will provide landing and hangar space for touring. Now, a day's tour of 400 miles in a motor car is considered a great accomplishment. An air voyage of 1000 miles in a helicopter will not be unusual or fatiguing.

Long-distance transportation of passengers and freight14 over land and sea will definitely remain the job for the large airplane. But the short haul15 of less than 1000 miles is equally the task of the helicopter, which can do it with the greatest efficiency.

Express and air mail will be carried from the airports to final destination by helicopter. There will be a direct-lift machine service to take airliner passengers from the airport to the city in a few minutes. There will be special delivery of perishable food16 to your door.

The winter growth of fresh vegetables such as beans and tomatoes, celery and lettuce17, in the warm South and the Far West has been hitherto restricted because of cost and time of transportation to market. The airline and helicopter freight service will speed such healthy foods to the ends of the nation. Hence our eating habits will change perhaps more than we realize. Strawberries in January, as it were, available for all.18

Private and bus helicopters will make possible vacations at seashore or mountain for countless thousands. The helicopter will destroy space for millions of people.19 Nothing is more delightful than touring in a helicopter. To hover and fill one's eyes with an enchanting vista is to bring joy to the soul.20

1. commute:（尤指在市区和郊区之间）乘公交车辆上下班。

2. hum：连续低沉的声音（如蜜蜂、马达等的嗡嗡声）；horizon：地平（线）。

3. drone：嗡嗡响。

4.发动机停止了一切向前的推力，然后垂直下降，直到机舱门离地面近得只有一步之遥。

5. 机身灰色的一侧标着“往纽约的特快直升机”的字样。

6. 向副驾驶员点头致意，他接过你的乘机月票。

7. dart：突然行进，猛冲。

8. 在纽约市中心的一幢建筑物上方盘旋，慢慢下降后落在一个60码见方的楼顶平台上。

9. aeronautical：航空（学）的。

10. 我坚信用直升机提供公交服务是可行的，而且实际上也是必然的。

11. 最重要的一点就是成千上万的人又可以回归自然，享受到乡村的怡人美景。

12. 中等收入的人群也可以拥有自已的房地产。

13. 一种新式的建筑将出现： 拥有屋顶平台，房子一侧是式样可爱的停机库。hangar：飞机棚，机库。

14. freight：货运（与express相比速度较慢而运费较低）。

15. haul：运送。

16. perishable food：易腐烂的食品。

17. celery：芹菜；lettuce：生菜。

18. 也就是说，现在所有人都可以在一月份吃到草莓了。as it were: 可以说，在某种程度上。

19.直升机将为数以百万计的人们彻底打破空间的概念。

20. 坐着直升机在空中盘旋，美丽的景观尽收眼底，令人心旷神怡。