从竞争对手看SpaceX的真正价值

2014-09-09 11:07:38来源：可可英语

　　Back in the U.S., competitors that have traditionally enjoyed non-competitive launch marketshave found themselves forced to respond to SpaceX. Earlier this year SpaceX sued the UnitedStates Air Force over an $11 billion contract awarded to Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint ventureUnited Launch Alliance (ULA) for a block of military satellite launches. SpaceX claims thecontract was awarded through a bidding process that was not competitive, and a federaljudge has ordered a review of the dealings. Even as it was suing the Air Force, SpaceX stillmanaged to receive USAF certification to launch military hardware aboard it Falcon 9 rocket.

　　美国方面，以往在航天器发射领域从未遇到过竞争的那些公司发现，自己必须针对SpaceX采取相应措施。今年早些时候，SpaceX把美国空军告上了法庭，原因是后者将一系列军事卫星发射任务交给了波音(Boeing)和洛克希德-马丁(Lockheed Martin)设立的合资公司United Launch Alliance(ULA)。SpaceX提出，这份合同在招标时并没有采用竞争的方式。一名联邦法院法官已经下令就此进行审查。就算双方正在打官司，SpaceX还是通过了美国空军的认证，从而有资格用自己的猎鹰9号火箭发射军用航天器。

　　“While the European Space Agency, Arianespace, Safran may not have taken SpaceX seriouslybefore, those entities certainly are taking SpaceX seriously now,” says Richard David, co-founder and CEO of commercial space industry analysis firm NewSpace Global, whose globalranking of private space companies places SpaceX at the very top. “NSG analysts track around700 companies worldwide, and it’s not just about SpaceX and its European launch competitors.But SpaceX is ranked number one for a reason.”

　　在商业航天业分析机构NewSpace Global(简称：NSG)的私营航天公司排行榜上，SpaceX高居榜首。NSG联合创始人兼首席执行官理查德o戴维说：“虽然欧洲航天局、Arianespace和赛峰以前可能没把它当回事，但现在它们一定严阵以待。我们的分析师追踪全球约700家公司，不光是SpaceX和它的欧洲竞争对手。但SpaceX独占鳌头有它的道理。”

　　The fact that absolutely no one in the business of launching payloads into space has been ableto ignore SpaceX as it piles success upon success says more about the company and its futureprospects than any rumored dollar valuation. And just as important to SpaceX’s futureprospects is the global aerospace industry’s inability to respond. The high costs and myriadchallenges inherent in the commercial spaceflight industry—this is, quite literally, rocketscience—means that most of SpaceX’scompetitors are either joint ventures like ULA andAirbus-Safran or large, bureaucratic, multinationals like Arianespace, which counts two dozenmajor shareholders from nearly a dozen European states all asserting influence and competinginterests into the company calculus.

　　在航天器发射领域，绝对没有谁能对接二连三获得成功的SpaceX视而不见，这比任何估值传闻都能更好地体现SpaceX的现状和未来。同时，世界上其他航天公司无力对SpaceX进行反击，这对该公司的未来前景同样重要。商业航天代价昂贵而且挑战纷繁，这是名副其实的“高科技”，这也意味着SpaceX的大多数竞争对手要么是合资企业，就像ULA以及空客和赛峰的合资公司，要么就是像Arianespace那样的官僚型跨国公司，它们有二十几个大股东，来自十几个欧洲国家，这些股东都想对公司产生影响，又都在其中争夺利益。

　　“They’re already responding, or trying to figure out the best way to respond,” says KateMaliga, an industry analyst at aerospace and defense analysts Tauri Group, of SpaceX’scompetitors. “But it’s hard, especially with the complicated structure of European governmentsand industry. There’s very little they can do in the next year or two, but they feel like they needto respond and they will try.”

　　航天和军工分析机构Tauri Group的行业分析师凯特o马利加说：“它们已经开始采取对策，或者正在寻找最佳的应对方法。但这很难，特别是考虑到欧洲政府和行业的复杂结构。今后一、两年它们基本上将束手无策，但它们觉得自己需要这样做，而且也会进行尝试。”

　　SpaceX may seem to be riding as its competitors struggle to adapt, but the company has byno means conquered the industry, Maliga says. Satellite companies are by nature risk-averse,and no company wants to have only one launch provider handling all of its multimillion-dollarhardware. Though SpaceX continues to build industry confidence, Arianespace already has adecades-long established record of launching successfully and on time—the latter somethingSpaceX has struggled with. For satellite television providers broadcasting the World Cup, forinstance, a delay in launching a satellite can cost many more millions than the price disparitybetween Arianespace and SpaceX, Maliga says. Which means SpaceX’s successes do not spelldoom for its more expensive competitors, at least not yet.

　　马利加指出，在竞争对手难以招架之际，SpaceX看起来也许一帆风顺，但无论如何也不能说它已经征服了这个行业。卫星公司本质上都厌恶风险，而且没有哪家公司愿意把自己价值数百亿美元的设备都交给同一家发射服务供应商。尽管SpaceX让业界对它越来越有信心，但几十年来，Arianespace一直都能做到成功而准时地发射，而SpaceX在准时方面做得并不如意。马利加举例说，对于转播世界杯赛事的卫视来说，卫星发射受到延误所产生的成本可能比Arianespace和SpaceX之间价差要多得多。也就是说，SpaceX的成功并不会让要价较高的竞争对手遭受灭顶之灾，至少现在还没有。

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