随着火箭发射变便宜：500强公司将竞逐“太空资源”

    “这次离成功也就一步之遥。”

    请留意SpaceX公司创始人埃隆•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。

    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。

    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。

    NewSpace Global公司是一家航天信息供应商，该公司首席执行官迪克•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。

    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。

    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•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。”

    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•惠勒创立——上周也宣布，该公司已获得理查德•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。

    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。

    “Close, but no cigar. This time.”

    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.

    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.

    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.

    “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.”

    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.

    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.

    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.”

    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.

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