随着火箭发射变便宜 500强公司将竞逐"太空资源"

“Close, but no cigar. This time.”

“这次离成功也就一步之遥。”

Behold the words of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, offering a post-op summary of the fiery crash-landing of one of his company’s first stage rocket boosters aboard a floating barge in the Atlantic earlier this month. It smacked of the billionaire entrepreneur’s typical comedic understatement. Video accompanying the comment, delivered in a tweet, shows the rocket coming in too fast and too steep before exploding in a magnificent fireball. It was a far cry from the soft landing Musk and SpaceX had planned.

请留意SpaceX公司创始人埃隆o穆斯克说的这句话。1月初，该公司一枚一级火箭助推器拖着熊熊烈焰，坠落在大西洋的一个钻井平台上，他随后发表了一番“行动总结”。它听起来倒是很符合这位亿万富翁一贯的语言风格——很有喜感地轻描淡写。这条发布于Twitter的评论还附带一段视频。从中可以看出，这枚火箭降落得太快太陡，随即爆炸起火，变成熊熊火球。这与穆斯克和SpaceX公司当初计划的软着陆相去甚远。

Most of the press called it a failure. Musk called it “close.” Experts familiar with the commercial spaceflight industry are calling it what it is: evidence that 2015 will be the year SpaceX manages to successfully bring a first stage rocket booster and its nine rocket engines safely back to Earth for reuse, potentially cutting the cost of space launch in half and upending the commercial launch industry.

多数媒体认为，这次发射彻底失败，但穆斯克认为它“接近成功”。熟知民用航天业的专家则给出了一个恰当评论：很明显， SpaceX公司将在2015年竭力回收一枚一级火箭助推器和它的9个火箭引擎，以重新使用。一旦成功，这将使得航天发射的成本减半，从而彻底颠覆商业发射业。

But lost in the whiz-bang awesomeness of rocket launches (and crashes) is the way SpaceX’s reusable rocket technology could impact industries beyond those associated with space, such as telecommunications and imaging. The cost of space access could drop from its current range of between $65 million and $70 million to something more like $30 million, or even $20 million, putting it within reach of companies and industries that couldn’t consider it before.

火箭发射（及坠毁）时惊心动魄的轰然巨响背后，隐藏着巨大的成本，而这正是Space X公司的可循环火箭技术不仅将影响航空业，还将影响通讯和卫星成像等其它行业的原因所在。依靠这种技术，太空探索的成本可能会从现在的6500万到7000万美元降至3000万美元左右，让那些此前从未考虑过这种事情的企业和行业也能尝试一下。

“When launch costs drop, new customers will emerge,” says Dick “Rocket” David, CEO of space industry information provider NewSpace Global. “But most of the customers that will be interested don’t even realize today what impact access to space will have on their business models.”

NewSpace Global公司是一家航天信息供应商，该公司首席执行官迪克o戴维称：“一旦发射成本下降，新客户就会涌现。但很多潜在感兴趣的客户直到现在都还没意识到，太空探索将对其商业模式产生什么影响。”

SpaceX wanted to bring its first stage booster back to Earth for a simple reason: the rocket boosters that are typically jettisoned after their fuel runs out cost millions of dollars to develop and manufacture. If the company can return a stage to Earth intact for refurbishment and reuse, it can dramatically reduce what has long been considered a cost of doing business.

SpaceX公司想回收一级火箭助推器的原因很简单：推进器的研发和制造过程都耗费了巨资，燃料用尽后，它们就会被当做垃圾丢弃。如果该公司能完整回收推进器，翻修后重复使用，就能显著降低航天业历来被认为高不可攀的巨额成本。

There remain questions: how much it costs to refurbish a rocket booster and how many times a single booster can be reused, for example. And space industry analysts think costs could go lower still. Musk has suggested that he’s eventually shooting for a sub-$10 million launch price. But merely halving the cost of launch could stoke increased demand for launch services and bring a flood of new entrants into the orbital domain.

不过人们仍有很多疑问：比如，翻修要花多少钱？一枚推进器能重复使用多少次？而航天业分析师认为，成本还会不断下降。穆斯克曾表示，他将全力以赴，最终让发射价格降到1000万美元以下。但仅仅让发射成本减半，就会带动发射服务的需求大幅增长，从而使太空轨道迎来大批新成员。

How all this impacts the average Fortune 500 firm remains to be seen, but two things are almost certain to happen in the near term. First, the services that companies and individuals currently get from space will become better, less expensive, and more accessible, says Carissa Christensen, managing partner at defense, space, and technology consultancy Tauri Group. That’s not necessarily a groundbreaking development, but it’s certainly a meaningful one. Companies spend a whole lot of money on communications, imagery, and other data collected and relayed by orbiting satellites. In some industries, the high cost of satellite services keep smaller companies from competing as effectively with their larger counterparts. “Cheaper, cooler, and better things from space is kind of a big deal,” Christensen says. “The benefit of much cheaper satellite services is not trivial.”

这些情况会对《财富》500强公司产生何种影响还有待观察，但近期肯定会出现两大新动向。首先，国防、航天及科技咨询公司金牛座集团执行合伙人卡瑞萨o克里斯滕森称，企业及个人所获得的航天技术服务会变得更加质优价廉，也更容易获取。这也许不是什么巨大的突破，但一定是意义深远的进步。目前凡是由轨道卫星采集并传送的通讯、影像及其他数据，各公司都要花大价钱才能获得。在某些行业，卫星服务的高昂成本使一些小型公司无法与大型企业有效抗衡。克里斯滕森称：“由航天技术提供的更便宜、更先进、也更优质的服务将是一桩大买卖。价格更低的卫星服务带来的好处不容小觑。”

Second, a huge number of new entrants and new dollars will pile into the orbital domain—and in fact already are. Just last week, SpaceX announced plans to build out a network of micro-satellites over the next five years that would blanket the globe in internet. This week the company announced that Google GOOG -3.10% and investment bank Fidelity FNF -0.80% have invested $1 billion in the project,valuing SpaceX at $10 billion. Another satellite internet startup known as OneWeb—launched by Google’s former satellite internet project lead, Greg Wyler, who left the company in September—also announced last week that it has secured funding from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Qualcomm QCOM -1.16% to create a satellite network of its own. The $2 billion project plans to launch 648 small satellites weighing 285 pounds each starting in 2018, each of which will require a ride into an orbit.

其次，大批新面孔和大量资本将涌入轨道领域——其实已经是这样了。就在上周，SpaceX公司宣布将在未来五年打造一个覆盖全球的微型卫星网络。本周该公司又宣布，谷歌公司和投资银行富达投资公司已对该项目投资10亿美元，使SpaceX公司估值达到100亿美元。另一家名为OneWeb的卫星网络初创公司——由去年九月从谷歌离职的前卫星网络项目负责人格里戈o惠勒创立——上周也宣布，该公司已获得理查德o布兰森的维珍集团和高通公司的投资，并且将打造自己的卫星网络。这个耗资20亿美元的项目计划从2018年开始发射648颗小型卫星，每颗重285磅，而且每颗都需要进入一个运行轨道。

Analysts are optimistic that space launch activity will create new opportunities that could in turn further boost investment in the space.

分析师们乐观预计，航天发射将会创造各种新机会，这反过来又会进一步促进航天领域的投资。

“Keep in mind that whenever you start launching more satellites, when you make launch services cheaper and bring new players into the market, you have a lot of spinoff effects,” Marco Caceres, director of space studies at aerospace and defense consultancy Teal Group. “You have an expanding market, you have submarkets. And you have investors taking a second, a third, a fourth look at companies like SpaceX and the ones that will follow. Venture capital will start flowing back into the market like it did in the 1990s.”

航天及国防咨询公司蒂尔集团航天研究总监马可o卡塞雷斯称：“请牢记，无论什么时候开始发射更多卫星，只要能大幅降低发射服务的价格，带来更多新入行的企业，就会产生大量连带效应。这样就能获得一个规模不断扩大的市场和各种细分市场，还能使投资者认真考量SpaceX及其他类似公司。风投就会像1990年代那样重新涌入这个市场。”

Emerging space companies are already baking lower launch costs into their business plans. Space is to the decade ahead what the Internet was to the 1990s, NewSpace Global’s David says. It’s not necessarily going to upend your revenue streams tomorrow. But if you’re not thinking about how space access impacts your business and how to leverage it to your advantage, you’re setting yourself up as the Barnes and Noble BKS -0.16% to someone else’s Amazon AMZN -0.94% .

新兴航天公司已在自己的商业计划里大幅降低了发射成本。戴维表示，在未来十年中，航天业的重要性就好比1990年代的互联网。它并不会立刻颠覆传统产业的收入模式。但如果不认真思考航天探索将对自己商业模式产生的影响，以及如何充分利用这一趋势，就会将自己置于巴诺书店当年面对亚马逊崛起时所处的那种境地。

“The challenge is understanding the impact something like a reusable first stage booster will have upon a very terrestrial business model today,” NewSpace Global’s David says. “If you’re Coca-Cola, if you’re Walmart, if you’re Toyota, if you’re Lukoil—what does a satellite have to do with your business model today? What will falling launch costs have to do with your business model in the future? From our perspective, the companies capable of connecting those dots will be able to capture tremendous financial growth opportunities. Those who fail to understand that connection to their very terrestrial business models could end up on the wrong side of financial evolution in the next decade.”

“挑战在于，要理解可循环一级推进器这类装备对目前世界上盛行的商业模式的影响。如果你恰好是可口可乐、沃尔玛、丰田、卢克石油这样的企业，卫星和你目前的商业模式有何关系呢？发射成本大幅下降与你未来的商业模式有何关系？在我们看来，那些能在这两者之间建立联系的企业将抓住大量增长机遇，而那些无法理解这种关系的企业在未来十年可能会走下坡路，” 戴维称。

Most companies don’t think of themselves as “space companies,” David says. But it’s hard to find a company on the Fortune 500 that isn’t intimately connected to terrestrial assets—real estate, agriculture, transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, brick and mortar facilities. The ability to connect all those assets in a proprietary way, to monitor them in realtime and generate accurate and instantaneous information about them will ensure a competitive edge for companies in the 21st century.

戴维表示，多数公司并不认为自己是“航天公司”。但在《财富》500强企业中，很难发现有几家是和陆上资产无关的——不管是房地产、农业、交通基础设施、能源基础设施还是实体建筑。能用独有方式连接所有这些资产，实时监控它们并实时获得精确的信息，将确保21世纪的企业获得竞争优势。

That’s especially true for firms who rely on fast, accurate information—and proprietary access to that information—to generate revenue. “Is it obvious that someone like BlackRock or Apollo would care about having their own satellites?” David says. “I think if you were to poll most PE firms and IBs on Wall Street they would say, ‘Space? You gotta be kiddin’ me.’ But what we’re going to see in the near term as launch costs come down, as more satellites are lifted, is an increase in knowledge at higher frequency. That’s going to lead to results that could change the very nature of financial analysis.”

对那些依靠快速准确的信息，并能独家获取这些信息才能获得收入的企业来说，这更是真切无疑。戴维表示：“像贝莱德集团和阿波罗公司这样的企业想拥有自己的卫星，这难道不是显而易见吗？我想，如果去问华尔街上大多数基金公司和投行对此事的看法，他们肯定会说，‘航天？开什么玩笑。’”但在不久的将来，我们就会看到，随着发射成本降低，更多卫星上天，信息量将更快增长。这将导致一些可能深刻改变金融分析本质的结果。”

Whether or not Stamford-based energy traders will soon find themselves jockeying for the choicest orbits from which to count oil tankers in the Strait of Malacca is anyone’s guess. But the takeaway from SpaceX’s most recent rocket recover “failure” is this: access to space is access to knowledge, and the next space race will be among companies vying to be a “space company.”

位于斯坦福德市的能源贸易商们是否会竞相争取最好的轨道来监测马六甲海峡的油轮数量，这谁也说不准。但SpaceX公司近期火箭回收“失败”的启示是：占领太空就能获得信息，下一轮太空竞赛将来自于那些竞相成为“航天公司”的企业。（财富中文网）