A design for a remotely-controlled fire engine could make long road or rail tunnels safer. It is the brainchild of an Italian fi

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问题     A design for a remotely-controlled fire engine could make long road or rail tunnels safer. It is the brainchild of an Italian fire safety engineer, who claims that his invention--dubbed Robogat -- could have cut the death toll in the disastrous Mont Blanc tunnel fire in March 1999 which killed 41 people. Most of the people who perished dies within 15 minutes of smoke first being detected. Quick action is needed when fire breaks out in a tunnel. Robogat can travel at about 50 kilometers per hour. The Mont Blanc fire was 5 kilometers from the French end of the tunnel, so a machine could have got there in about six minutes.
    The Robogat has been designed and patented by Domenico Piatti of the Naples fire department; it runs on a monorail suspended from the roof of the tunnel, when the Robogat reaches a fire, it plugs into a modified water main running along the tunnel and directs its hoses at the base of the fire. It is capable of pumping 3,000 liters of high-pressure water per minute--about the same rate as that from an airport fire tender. Normal fire engines deliver 500 liters per minute The machine’ s heat-resistant skin is designed to withstand temperatures of up to 1,000~C. Designed to fight fires in tunnels up to 12 kilometers long, the Robogat will be operated from a control centre outside the tunnel. Ideally, tunnels should have a Robogat stationed at each end, allowing fires to be tackled from both sides.
    Piatti says that it would be relatively cheap to install the Robogat in new tunnels. With each machine costing around $ 250,000. "That’s not expensive." says Stuart. Jagger, a British fire fighting specialist, who adds, "Fire-fighters normally have to approach the blaze from upwind. People have dies if the ventilation is overwhelmed or someone changes the ventilation.  If the robot worked remotely it would be all advantage. But this introduces extra problems: the Robogat would have to feed information about the state of the fire back to its controller, and the sensors, like the rest of the machine, would have to be fire-resistant. Piatti is now looking for financial backing to build a prototype."
The Robogat is designed to pump water ______.

选项 A、at a speed of 500 liters a minute
B、almost as fast as an airport tender
C、six times faster than an ordinary fire-engine
D、at a rate of an airport fire tender

答案D

解析 根据第二段第三句It is capable of pumping 3,000 liters of high-pressure water per minute--about the same rate as that from an airport fire tender,可直接得出答案为选项D。
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