谁能帮我翻译英文（见补充说明）?

谁能帮我翻译英文（见补充说明）?
It took only fifty-eight years, however, to go four times that fast, so that by 1938 men in airplanes were traveling at better than 400mph. It took a mere twenty-year flick of time to double the limit again. And by the 1960’s rocket planes approached speeds of 4000mph, and men in space capsules were circling the earth at 18,000mph.
Whether we examine distances traveled, altitudes reached, or minerals mined, the same accelerative trend is obvious. The pattern, here and in a thousand other statistical series, is absolutely clear and unmistakable. Thousands of years go by, and then, in our own times, a sudden bursting of the limits, a fantastic spurt forward.