The main reason why aircraft are painted white or light colors is to reflect sunlight and minimize both the heating and any potential damage from the solar radiation. It’s basically the same as putting sunblock on. For example, on a sunny day if you’re wearing a dark-colored shirt, you’ll heat up more than if you will if you’re wearing a white-colored shirt.
飛機被塗成白色或者淺色的原因是爲了反射陽光，或者將太陽輻射造成的.危害降到最低，這就和塗防曬霜一個道理。舉個例子，在晴天，如果你穿深色的衣服，你就會覺着很熱，而穿白色衣服就會好點兒。
The most important parts to keep a light color and protected from the sunlight are the parts that are plastic or composite materials. Carbon fiber, fiberglass, et cetera. Those tend to be the nose cone, which needs to be transparent because there’s a radar behind it so that’s a plastic material.
最需要塗成淺顏色，阻擋太陽光的部分是塑料以及合成材料，碳纖維，玻璃纖維等等。這些一般都是頭錐體，都需要是透明的，因爲之後放有雷達，所以是塑料材料。
And also, often in modern airplanes the control surfaces are made out of composite materials. So, they’ll normally be painted either white, or sometimes they’ll be painted a light grey color.
同樣，在現代飛機中，飛行操縱界面是由合成材料製成。所以一般情況下，他們通常被塗成白色或者淺灰色。
There’s nothing wrong necessarily with painting an airplane a color. Another thing that tends to happen with the paint is, over time it will oxidize. So, if you’re painting something red, after a while when it’s exposed both to the sun and also environmental conditions, it’ll tend to kind of whiten up a little bit anyway ’cause of oxidization.
不過，把飛機塗成彩色也沒什麼不對。如果把飛機塗成彩色，有一個問題是，過段時間它就會氧化。所以，如果你把飛機塗成紅色，過段時間，它就會由於氧化，變得越來越白了。
Some airlines, historically, have tried to use no paint at all. So, for a long time American Airlines had their airplanes just as metal-colored so that they didn’t have any protection, and again, it’s not a big deal for the metal parts. Problem is that those airplanes would start to tarnish over time so they had to spend time and money to polish them frequently. So, most airlines now have gone to light-colored paint airplanes.
歷史上，一些公司嘗試把飛機完全不塗色。所以在很長時間，美國航空所有的飛機都是金屬色，沒有任何防護。問題是，時間一長這些飛機就會生鏽，所以必須花費時間打磨他們，所以最後大家還是選擇把飛機塗成淺色。
