穿越迷雾：看SpaceX的真正价值，要看它的竞争对手

    上周，专注于科技创业领域的TechCrunch网站报道，私募投资者对SpaceX的估值“接近100亿美元”。这在互联网上引发了对该公司价值的大猜想，各种传闻甚嚣尘上。SpaceX迅速粉碎了这些猜测。该公司发言人在一份声明中表示：“SpaceX目前没有任何融资活动，也没有外部投资者进行过那种水平或者更高量级的估值。”就这样，尽管一度被奉为价值百亿美元的行业巨无霸，上周五SpaceX的收盘价又回到了周一开盘时的水平。

    私营航天业非常不透明，SpaceX又口风甚严，再加上风投领域的小道消息看起来很不可靠，这让人们很难对它进行解读。同样的，该公司的自我描述也不一定能成为对它进行评价的依据（埃隆•穆斯克说SpaceX将在未来10年里登陆火星。该公司总裁格温•肖特韦尔则放言，到2100年SpaceX将成为太阳系运输领域的主导者。在这两个时点之间，SpaceX还打算把火箭有效载荷提高到58.5吨）。评估该公司当前价值和升值潜力的最佳途径也许不是金钱或者豪言壮语，而是观察这一业界新贵对商业航天领域的竞争对手产生了怎样的影响。

    20世纪80年代初，美国退出了商业航天市场。从那时起，商业航天器发射领域基本上就处于被欧洲公司垄断的状态，比如法国的Arianespace[法国航空业巨头空中客车（Airbus）持有部分股份]和International Launch Services[美俄合资，采用俄罗斯质子号（Proton）运载火箭的技术发射卫星]。尽管SpaceX通过为国际空间站（International Space Station）运送补给从美国国家航空航天局（NASA）获得了很大一部分收入，但在该公司截至2018年的40多次发射任务中，价值2000亿美元的卫星发射市场也占了很大的比重，而且这个比例还在不断上升。

    SpaceX的航天器发射价格有时仅仅为传统竞争对手的一半，这让它在较短时间里成功实现了很高的市场占有率。该公司安全记录良好，业界对其核心业务的信心也不断增强。今年夏天，SpaceX为在德克萨斯州南部建立自己的专用发射场铺平了道路，并且开始实验火箭循环使用技术，这有可能大幅降低发射成本。

    如果SpaceX在欧洲等地的竞争对手相信所有这些都只是炒作，那它们表达这种态度的方式也太奇怪了。就算不仔细观察也能发现，这些公司看来正在慌忙展开行动。

    Last week, rumors concerning the value of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rippled across the Web after tech startup-watcher TechCrunch reported that private investment in the company valued it at “somewhere south of $10 billion.” SpaceX quickly quashed the rumor. “SpaceX is not currently raising any funding nor has any external valuation of that magnitude or higher been done,” a company spokesman said in a statement. And so SpaceX ended the week just as it began it, despite having briefly enjoyed the status of a $10 billion industry behemoth.

    The private spaceflight industry is so opaque and SpaceX’s cards are so closely held that it is difficult to get a read on the company, especially using the venture capital rumor mill. Nor can one necessarily judge SpaceX based on what the company says about itself. (Elon Musk says that the company is headed to Mars in the next decade. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell boasts that by 2100 the company will dominate transportation across the solar system. Between them is a 58.5-ton payload of ambition.) Perhaps the best way to evaluate SpaceX and its potential value isn’t in dollar figures or in audacious claims, but by observing what the upstart space firm is already doing to its competition in the commercial space industry.

    That competition—mostly European space launch providers like France’s Arianespace (partially owned by French aerospace giant Airbus) and International Launch Services (a U.S.-Russia joint venture that launches satellites aboard Russian Proton launch technology)—has largely held a monopoly on commercial space launches since the U.S. retreated from the industry in the early 1980s. Though SpaceX derives a chunk of its income from NASA in exchange for resupplying the International Space Station, the $200 billion satellite industry makes up a huge and growing chunk of SpaceX’s nearly 40-strong launch manifest through 2018.

    By offering space launch services at prices that in some cases undercut the traditional launch industry by half, SpaceX has managed significant market penetration in a relatively short period of time. It has a strong safety record and industry confidence in its core services is growing. Over the summer the company cleared the path toward construction of its own dedicated launch facility in southern Texas while also experimenting with reusable rocket stage technology that could reduce launch costs by an order of magnitude.

    If SpaceX’s competitors in Europe and elsewhere believe all this to be nothing but hype, they have a strange way of showing it. To even the casual observer, SpaceX’s competitors appear to be scrambling.