Billionaire Dennis Tito, tired of being told that we can't send humans to Mars just yet, on Wednesday revealed his scheme for launching two astronauts to the red planet as early as December 2017. Titled "Inspiration Mars," the flyby mission would exploit a rare line of Earth and Mars that minimizes the time and the fuel it would take to get to Mars and back home again. The astronauts would come within 100 miles of the Martian surface before being taken back to Earth. "It would be a voyage of around 800 million miles around the sun in 501 days," Tito testified Wednesday at a hearing of the House subcommittee on space. "No longer is a Mars flyby mission just one more theoretical idea. It can be done. Not in a matter of decades, but in a few years." Tito is a former engineer who made a fortune in investment management and, in 2001, became the first person to pay his way into space, buying a seat on a Russian rocket. Now he's pitching Inspiration Mars as a national priority for the United States. Grab this rare chance to go to Mars quickly or risk seeing China or Russia get there first, he told members of Congress. Tito mentioned a backup plan that would offer Inspiration Mars four more years of development time. Another line of planets in 2021 offers a second chance to go to Mars fairly quickly, but the journey would last 80 days longer and require that the astronauts fly much closer to the sun, within the orbit of Venus, in one portion of the trip. That would add to the already considerable radiation hazards. When Tito talked of the idea of Inspiration Mars early this year, he thought he could use primarily private rockets and minimize the need for NASA involvement. But the possibility study led Tito back to NASA. NASA is building a huge rocket, the Space Launch System, that is supposed to be ready for its originally, uncrewed test flight in 2017. The second launch, carrying a crew in NASA's new Orion capsule for the first time, isn't scheduled until 2021. Tito's plan would essentially borrow the SLS for the... From the passage we know Dennis Tito probably was   _  . A) a successful businessman B) a creative engineer C) a famous astronaut D) a generous expert
B

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a novel about a 15-year-old autistic boy named Christopher Boone. After discovering the dead body of Wellington, his neighbor's dog, Christopher decides to find out the cause of the dog's death. He records his findings, as he has decided that he will create a "murder mystery novel" of the situation. But like any murder mystery novel, nothing is as simple as it seems. Christopher runs into many difficult situations because of his disability. He again and again mentions how he admires Sherlock Holmes (a fictional detective), which gives me an understanding as to why he continues to look into Wellington's death even after his father makes him promise not to.  Christopher's story seems so true and heartfelt and that makes the novel an entertaining read. The author, Mark Haddon, had me wanting to keep reading to find out what Christopher would get himself into next.  Haddon shows how Christopher' s disability affects how he goes about solving the mystery. Christopher has difficulty in communicating or forming relationships with others, but he has a great visual   memory and ability to understand difficult math.  This book was required reading at my school, but it became more than something I had to read. Haddon showed how these disabilities affect the lives of not only the children diagnosed   with them, but also those around them.  The novel feels real because it was written from Christopher's point of view. For example, when Christopher explains that when he was little he didn't understand much about other people having minds, it gives the impression that he's a real person.   I believe that teenagers sometimes aren't sensitive to kids with mental disabilities. I think that when people read this novel, they will have a better understanding of what people with mental disabilities and those around them have to deal with on a daily basis. In the writer' s opinion, Haddon makes the story feel real by  _  . A) telling us the story can happen around us B) writing from Christopher's point of view C) making it easy to understand the story D) giving a lot of explanations
B

If you have a watch, don't go to a watchmaker's unless something is wrong with the machinery. Once I had a beautiful watch. And it had kept perfect time. But one night it happened that I forgot to _ it _  . Next morning I went to a watchmaker as I wanted my perfect watch to be set by the exact time. He examined it and said, "The regulator   must be pushed up as your watch is four minutes slow. I tried to stop him from doing so, but he didn't listen and pushed the regulator. My beautiful watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. By the end of the second month it had left all the clocks and watches of the town far behind. I could do nothing but take it to another watchmaker to be regulated. I expected him to regulate the watch at once, but he asked me to come in a week's time. When at last I got my watch back from him, it began to slow down. And I failed to be in time for trains, business affairs, and even missed my dinners. Now I went to a third watchmaker. When I was waiting for him to repair my poor watch, he took it to pieces and said that he would try to finish this work in three or four days. What I could do was to nod my head. After that, my watch went for half a day, and then stopped. So I kept taking my watch from one watchmaker to another. But each watchmaker disappointed me. My watch had cost me two hundred dollars, but I paid for repairs more than two hundred. At last I decided to buy another watch, which I did. The writer was sure that   _  . A) you'd better not have your watch repaired if nothing has gone wrong with it B) you'd better never have your watch repaired C) you'd better not have your watch regulated D) you'd better repair your watch yourself

A