硅谷风投大佬爱上造火箭

    史蒂夫•尤尔韦特松不记得他究竟是先有了这种爱好，还是先产生了投资兴趣。但他的确记得，2005年，他和儿子开始摆弄火箭模型，他们随后第一次赶赴内华达州的黑岩沙漠，观看了一场DIY（自己动手）火箭盛会。

    “我们看着这些硕大的火箭，当时就想：‘这些玩意太疯狂了，我绝不会做这种事，疯子才会这么干，”尤尔韦特松说。“时间快进到今天，我们现在做的正是这种东西。”

    尤尔韦特松是硅谷风投基金德丰杰投资公司(Draper Fisher Jurvetson)的合伙人之一，他花了大量的工作时间来思考技术如何颠覆市场，怎样才能找到最新颖、最有望改变现有范式的初创公司。但并非巧合的是，他同时还是SpaceX和PlanetLabs这两家公司的董事，后者是一家小型低成本地球成像卫星制造商。（德丰杰公司是这两家公司的投资者。）

    尤尔韦特松长期以来一直在培养自己对太空和航天的兴趣，他在德丰杰公司总部(位于加州门洛帕克市）的办公室散落着多年来收集的源自阿波罗时代的美国航空航天局(NASA)物品。过去十年，他和他的儿子们把他们对加州中央谷和黑岩沙漠的痴迷转化成了具体的行动，在每隔几个月举办的DIY活动上建造、发射体积更大、更复杂的火箭。

    “孩子们的个头越来越大，火箭的体量也越来越大，”尤尔韦特松说。“我们一直在兴致勃勃地挑战极限，看看我们究竟能够制造出多大多快的火箭。”

    这种爱好非常契合尤尔韦特松的投资兴趣，以及21世纪的技术（特别是太空技术）发展潮流。自从他在过去十年的中期开始设计、制造他的第一支火箭以来，移动设备的迅猛发展已经迅速地（有些人会说非常残忍地）降低了芯片、传感器和其他电子产品的价格，以至于现在任何人都有能力制造一支极富技术含量、能够精确测量速度、高度和方向等指标的火箭。现在，尤尔韦特松父子在动手打造（也有可能摧毁）火箭之前，能够使用火箭设计软件进行详尽的仿真模拟。而就在短短几年前，这也是大多数DIY火箭爱好者不可想象的事情。

    尤尔韦特松说，同样是这些技术力量，再加上联邦政府的政策改变，正在推动许多私人太空发射和卫星公司进入太空。这种正在发生的转变不仅在改变可能性，同时也在改变经济上的可行性。“很长时间以来，太空领域并没有明显的创业机会，”尤尔韦特松说。“从1995年我开始做这行，直到2005年或2006年，我还没有发现任何一家看起来值得拜访的公司。现在大不一样了，有一大批公司值得考虑。”

    一些追求这些机会的人本身就是火箭爱好者，尽管“爱好者”或许并不是一个完全正确的词汇。尤尔韦特松是在火箭试验场第一次遇到PlanetLabs公司的运营团队——几位前美国航空航天局的科学家。无论出于什么原因，火箭技术也对其他的硅谷技术型创业者具有强大的吸引力。繁忙的日程和进入壁垒使得他的一些同事保持着一种观望态度，“但每当我向任何一位高科技企业家提起火箭技术时，他们总是说他们非常想进入这一领域，”尤尔韦特松说。其中一些人已经在这样做了：除了他的儿子，Nest公司业务发展副总裁埃里克•查尔顿也经常跟尤尔韦特松一起发射火箭。

    问起他的爱好，尤尔韦特松立即给出了热情的回应，时而聊起他已经建造好的火箭，时而描绘一张路线图，洋洋洒洒地列举正在轨道上浮现的无数机遇。他认为火箭发射和卫星行业正在经历一个迅速的转型时期。他的语言深入浅出，但又不乏火箭科学术语，让人觉得他非常了解相关技术，知道所有这一切的运行机理，而且深信所有这一切在不久的将来就会变成现实。尤尔韦特松讲了一个故事：他和儿子曾经把一支火箭的速度提升至2.5马赫（即时速约1,900英里），但尾翼随后脱离，造成了严重故障。他说：“天空中在那一瞬间好像举办了一场旧货甩卖活动，整个火箭都散了架，重新变成了零部件。”

    他说：无论是对于应用程序、软件和服务来说，卫星层依然有大机会，但只有当每磅货运的发射成本大幅降低之后，这一切才能成为现实。

    “这就好比只有当更多的光纤厂建立起来之后，互联网才会变得更加经济可行，”尤尔韦特松说。“同样，当SpaceX和其他公司降低进入天空的成本之后，更多的卫星创新才会出现，甚至有可能提供覆盖整个地球的高速宽带。软件和服务层面想必会赚到大钱。”

    Steve Jurvetson doesn't remember which came first, the hobby or the investment interest. But he does remember going out to Nevada's Black Rock Desert with his son for the first time in 2005 to witness a do-it-yourself rocketry event after he and his son began dabbling in model rockets.

    "We saw these enormous rockets, and I remember thinking 'That's just crazy stuff, I would never do something like that, that's nuts." Jurvetson says. "Fast-forward to today, and we're doing exactly that kind of stuff."

    As a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jurvetson spends his working hours thinking about how technologies upend markets and seeking out the most novel, potentially paradigm-shifting startup companies he can find. But it's no coincidence that he also sits on the board of both SpaceX and PlanetLabs, a maker of small, low-cost earth-imaging satellites. (DFJ is invested in both companies.)

    Jurvetson has long cultivated an interest space and spaceflight, and his office at DFJ's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters is littered with Apollo-era NASA artifacts he's collected over the years. For the last decade, he and his sons have acted on that fascination in California's Central Valley and the Black Rock Desert, building and launching ever larger and more sophisticated rockets at DIY events held every few months.

    "The kids got bigger, the rockets got bigger," Jurvetson says. "And we've had a really fun time pushing the envelope with how big or how fast we can build a rocket."

    It's a hobby that dovetails nicely both with Jurvetson's investment interests as well as the broader arc of technology -- especially space technology -- in the 21st century. Since he began designing and constructing his first rockets in the middle of the last decade, the tremendous leaps and bounds of mobile devices have rapidly (some would say brutally) driven down the prices of chips, sensors, and other electronics to the point that anyone can now make a rocket imbued with technologies that allow for precise measurements of speed, altitude, and orientation. Jurvetson and his sons can now run detailed software simulations on a rocket design before they build (and potentially wreck) it, something that was unthinkable for most DIY rocketeers even a few years ago.

    These same technological forces, plus a change of heart for the federal government, are democratizing access to space through private space launch and satellite companies, Jurveston says. That ongoing shift is transforming not only the art of the possible but the art of the financially feasible. "There were not obvious venture opportunities in space for a long time," Jurvetson says. "From when I started in 1995 until 2005 or 2006, I didn't see anything that looked even worth a first meeting. Now it's very different -- there are a whole bunch of them."

    Some of the people pursuing those opportunities are rocket hobbyists themselves -- though "amateur" might not be exactly the right term. Jurvetson first met the team of former NASA scientists that now run DFJ-backed PlanetLabs on the rocket range. For whatever reason, rocketry maintains a strong allure for other Silicon Valley technologist-types as well. Busy schedules and something of a barrier to entry keep some of his colleagues on the outside looking in, "but anytime I mention it to any tech entrepreneur, they say how much they want to get out there," Jurvetson says. Some of them do: Aside from his sons, the person with whom Jurvetson launches most often is Erik Charlton, vice president of business at Nest.

    Ask him about his hobby and Jurvetson enthusiastically responds, careening between a discussion of the rockets he's built and a road map of the myriad opportunities emerging in orbit, where both the space launch and satellite industries are going through periods of rapid transformation. He uses layman's language sprinkled with the jargon of a rocket scientist, hinting at a deep technical understanding of how all this works -- and how it all will work someday in the not-too-distant future. Jurvetson tells a story about the time he and his son pushed a rocket to Mach 2.5 -- approximately 1,900 miles per hour -- before a fin separated and caused a critical failure. "It was an instant yard sale in the sky, the entire thing shredded back into the components it was made of," he says.

    There remains big opportunity in the satellite layer -- for applications, software, services -- that only comes when the cost-per-pound of launch cargo decreases, he says.

    "The analogy would be when fiber optic plants got more built up and made the Internet more feasible," Jurvetson says. "Similarly when SpaceX and others create cheaper access to space, you'll have more satellite innovation, maybe even broadband for the entire planet. And presumably big money would be made in the software and services layer."