Olvasott szöveg értése — Task 1

Angol középszintű érettségi, 2017. május

In this part from the afterword to the book How to Make a Spaceship, some parts of sentences have been left out.
Your task is to reconstruct the text by filling in the gaps.
Write the letters in the boxes next to the numbers
Remember that there is one extra phrase that you will not need.
When you have entered all your answers, cick on the button Check answers.
If you make a mistake, please try again until all your answers are correct.
Hawking on space travel

In this extract from How To Make A Spaceship, Stephen Hawking explains why he said yes when offered a seat on Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo and (1) .
Stephen Hawking‘I have no fear of adventure. Years ago I barrelled down the steepest hills of San Francisco in my wheelchair. I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island and (2) .
In 2007, after my sixty-fifth birthday, I did something special: I experienced zero gravity. It temporarily took away my disability and (3) . After forty years in a wheelchair, I had four wonderful minutes of weightlessness. I travelled in a modified Boeing 727 jet over the ocean off Florida which (4) . It has always been my dream to travel into space, and the experience was amazing.
Now I have a chance to travel to the start of space aboard a Virgin Galactic SpaceShip. Richard Branson is opening spaceflight up for ordinary citizens, and (5) . I immediately said yes to Richard when he offered me a seat on SpaceShipTwo. I have lived with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, for fifty years. When I was diagnosed at age twenty-one, I was given two years to live. I was starting my PhD at Cambridge and (6) whether the universe had always existed and would always exist or had begun with a big explosion. As my body grew weaker, my mind grew stronger. I lost the use of my hands and (7) , but I developed ways of travelling through the universe in my mind and visualising how it all worked.
I believe that we need a new generation of astronauts to explore our solar system. These first private astronauts will be pioneers, and (8) . It is my belief, and it is the message of Julian Guthrie’s book, for which I have written the afterword, that there is no limit to human effort. Raise your sights. Be brave and kind. Remember to look up at the stars and (9) . Space, here I come!’

A) facing the scientific challenge of determining
B) gave me a feeling of true freedom
C) why we need a new generation of explorers
D) not at your feet
E) if I am lucky, I hope to be among the early passengers
F) down in a submarine
G) could no longer write equations
H) trying to catch them
I) they will help to change the world for good
K) did manoeuvres that took me into this state of weightlessness