“Close, but no cigar. This time.”“这次离顺利也就一步之遥。”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.请求注意SpaceX公司创始人埃隆o穆斯克说道的这句话。
1月初，该公司一枚一级火箭助推器拖着熊熊烈焰，坠落大西洋的一个钻井平台上，他随后公开发表了一番“行动总结”。它听得一起倒是很合乎这位亿万富翁一贯的语言风格——很有喜感地轻描淡写。这条公布于Twitter的评论还附带一段视频。
借此可以显现出，这枚火箭迫降得太快太陡，旋即发生爆炸发生爆炸，变为熊熊火球。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.多数媒体指出，这次升空完全告终，但穆斯克指出它“相似顺利”。
熟悉民用航天业的专家则得出了一个合理评论：很显著， SpaceX公司将在2015年极力重复使用一枚一级火箭助推器和它的9个火箭引擎，以新的用于。一旦顺利，这将使得航天升空的成本减为，从而完全政治宣传商业升空业。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.火箭升空（及失事）时惊心动魄的轰然巨响背后，隐蔽着极大的成本，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光学等其它行业的原因所在。
依赖这种技术，太空探寻的成本可能会从现在的6500万到7000万美元降到3000万美元左右，让那些此前未曾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戴维称之为：“一旦升空成本上升，新的客户就不会兴起。
但很多潜在感兴趣的客户直到现在都还没意识到，太空探寻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公司想要重复使用一级火箭助推器的原因很非常简单：推进器的研发和生产过程都花费了巨资，燃料耗尽后，它们就不会被当作垃圾弃置。
如果该公司能原始重复使用推进器，整修后重复使用，就能明显减少航天业历年来被指出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惑：比如，整修要花上多少钱？一枚推进器能重复使用多少次？而航天业分析师指出，成本还不会大大上升。
穆斯克曾回应，他将全力以赴，最后让升空价格降至1000万美元以下。但意味着让升空成本减为，就不会造就升空服务的市场需求大幅度快速增长，从而使太空轨道步入大批新成员。
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.”这些情况不会对《财富》500强劲公司产生何种影响还有待仔细观察，但近期认同不会经常出现两大新动向。首先，国防、航天及科技咨询公司金牛座集团继续执行合伙人卡瑞萨o克里斯滕森称之为，企业及个人所取得的航天技术服务不会显得更为质优价廉，也更容易提供。
这或许不是什么极大的突破，但一定是意义深远影响的变革。目前凡是由轨道卫星收集并传输的通讯、影像及其他数据，各公司都要花上大价钱才能取得。
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地抗衡。克里斯滕森称之为：“由航天技术获取的更加低廉、更加先进设备、也更加优质的服务将是一桩大交易。价格更加较低的卫星服务带给的益处不容极强。
”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进轨道领域——只不过早已是这样了。就在上周，SpaceX公司宣告将在未来五年打造出一个覆盖面积全球的微型卫星网络。
本周该公司又宣告，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公司估值超过100亿美元。另一家取名为OneWeb的卫星网络初创公司——由去年九月从谷歌辞职的前卫星网络项目负责人格里戈o惠勒创办——上周也宣告，该公司已取得理查德o布兰森的维珍集团和高通公司的投资，并且将打造出自己的卫星网络。这个斥资20亿美元的项目计划从2018年开始升空648颗小型卫星，每颗重285磅，而且每颗都必须转入一个运营轨道。
Analysts are optimistic that space launch activity will create new opportunities that could in turn further boost investment in the space.分析师们悲观预计，航天升空将不会建构各种新的机会，这反过来又不会更进一步增进航天领域的投资。“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卡塞雷斯称之为：“请求牢记，无论什么时候开始升空更加多卫星，只要能大幅度减少升空服务的价格，带给更多新陈慧娴的企业，就不会产生大量连带效应。
这样就能取得一个规模不断扩大的市场和各种细分市场，还能使投资者严肃考量SpaceX及其他类似于公司。风投就不会像1990年代那样新的涌进这个市场。”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度减少了升空成本。戴维回应，在未来十年中，航天业的重要性就只不过1990年代的互联网。
它并会马上政治宣传传统产业的收益模式。但如果不认真思考航天探寻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，就不会将自己置放巴诺书店当年面临亚马逊兴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，要解读可循环一级推进器这类装备对目前世界上流行的商业模式的影响。如果你刚好是可口可乐、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？升空成本大幅度上升与你未来的商业模式有何关系？在我们显然，那些能在这两者之间建立联系的企业将逃跑大量快速增长机遇，而那些无法解读这种关系的企业在未来十年可能会走下坡路，” 戴维称之为。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.戴维回应，多数公司毫无疑问自己是“航天公司”。
但在《财富》500强劲企业中，很难找到有几家是和陆上资产牵涉到的——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。能用独特方式相连所有这些资产，动态监控它们并动态取得准确的信息，将保证21世纪的企业取得竞争优势。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.”对那些依赖较慢精确的信息，并能独家提供这些信息才能取得收益的企业来说，这堪称感慨毫无疑问。
戴维回应：“像贝莱德集团和阿波罗公司这样的企业想要享有自己的卫星，这怎么会不是显而易见吗？我想要，如果去回答华尔街上大多数基金公司和投行对此事的观点，他们认同不会说道，‘航天？进什么笑话。’”但在旋即的将来，我们就不会看见，随着升空成本减少，更加多卫星上天，信息量将更慢快速增长。这将造成一些有可能深刻印象转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.”坐落于斯坦福德市的能源贸易商们否不会竞相谋求最差的轨道来监测马六甲海峡的油轮数量，这谁也说道不许。但SpaceX公司近期火箭重复使用“告终”的救赎是：攻占太空就能取得信息，下一轮太空竞赛将来自于那些竞相沦为“航天公司”的企业。
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