????上周二早上，天尚未破曉，一枚獵鷹9號火箭從卡納維拉爾角沖天而起。它搭載著一艘名叫“龍”的宇宙飛船。起飛、船箭飛離和進入軌道都按部就班地進行著。對美國國家航天局（NASA）部署在卡納維拉爾角空軍基地的支持人員來說，這天早上并沒有出現什么異常。不過讓我們把視線拉遠一點：此次發射的獵鷹9號火箭以及宇宙飛船“龍”都是一家美國私人公司的產品。這家名叫“太空探索技術公司”（SpaceX）的公司已經不是第一次穿越大氣層了，不過這次的任務比以往更加重要，也更加雄心勃勃。這次發射其實主要是給NASA看的，如果“龍”能成功完成繞地飛行、操控性展示、導航系統展示以及與國際空間站對接、卸載非必需供給品等任務，然后成功返回地球（兩周后“龍”將墜落在南加州外海數百英里處），那它將成為NASA最主要的近地軌道空地物流系統。也就是說，私人航天業將迎來真正的開始。

????太空探索技術公司的共同創始人伊隆?馬斯科（同時也是特斯拉汽車公司的幕后老板）把“龍”的發射比作贏得了“超級碗”杯。這個比喻還是很恰當的，因為它標志著太空探索技術公司1800多名員工的努力終于獲得了不朽的成功。然后馬斯科更加生動地說道：“這就像90代年中期互聯網誕生時一樣。互聯網一開始是一個政府項目，后來商業公司參與進來。這個進程大大加快了互聯網的發展速度，并使它成了大眾市場也能消費的東西。我認為現在我們也處在一個類似的拐點上……”從某種意義上看，這番話也是對的。NASA知道這一天遲早要來，因此全心全意地歡迎這一天。這次發射也代表了NASA朝著自己的“商業軌道運輸服務計劃”邁進了一大步。這個計劃的目的是要用商用航天器取代由政府資助的近地軌道運輸工具（如航天飛機），以便于NASA集中精力探索更深遠的宇宙空間（如火星）。不過暫且別樂觀的太早。互聯網作為一個平臺，早在它進入公共領域、成為眾所周知的“萬維網”并改變了我們的生活之前，它的基礎架構就已經存在了——哪怕當時實踐中不存在，它的理論也已經存在。

????但航天器卻沒那么簡單。它是一部極為復雜的機器，涉及的知識浩如煙海。制造航天器的費用極高，需要的技能也極其專門化。火箭科學家也一直被人們看成“超級學究派”。市場會不會真的出現以航空飛行作為主營業務的創業公司？也就是那種在自家車庫創業，結果卻改變了貨物的太空運輸方式（乃至是我們自己的旅行方式）的公司？事實上，這種公司已經存在了。

????Tuesday morning, in the pre-dawn darkness off Cape Canaveral, a Falcon 9 rocket took to the sky, carrying with it a spacecraft called Dragon. The liftoff, capsule breakaway, and subsequent Earth orbit were in all ways routine. For the NASA support crew at Air Force Station Canaveral, nothing about the morning was extraordinary. But take a step back: That rocket, the Falcon, and capsule, the Dragon, were built by a private company called SpaceX. It's not the first time SpaceX has pierced the atmosphere, but this mission is more important, and ambitious, than all that came before it. It's an audition for NASA. If the Dragon capsule completes all its requisite tasks -- orbiting Earth, demonstrating its maneuverability and navigation systems, docking with the International Space Station (ISS), unloading its "nonessential" supplies, and returning to Earth (after two weeks it will splash down hundreds of miles off the Southern California coast) -- it will become NASA's primary low-orbit cargo system. Which means, yes, the true beginning of private industry in space.

????The day of the launch, Elon Musk, SpaceX's co-founder (and the man behind Tesla Motors), compared the event to winning the Superbowl, which is fair -- it's the culmination of a monumental effort by the Hawthorne, California company's 1,800 employees. Musk then said something far more telling: "It is like the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s when commercial companies entered what was originally a government endeavor. That move dramatically accelerated the pace of advancement and made the Internet accessible to the mass market. I think we're at a similar inflection point...". Also true, in a sense. NASA knew this day would come and embraced it wholeheartedly. Indeed, the SpaceX launch also represents a giant leap for NASA's ownCommercial Orbital Transportation Services program, the aim of which is to replace government-funded low Earth orbit transport (eg. the shuttle) to focus on deeper space (eg. Mars). But hang on a second. The Internet is a platform, the infrastructure of which already existed in theory if not in practice before the network of networks moved into the public sector, became the World Wide Web, and changed everything.

????A spacecraft isn't so simple. It's a mind-numbingly complex machine. The overhead is extremely high, the skills ridiculously specialized -- a rocket scientist's cred as uber-nerd is as deservedly true today as it was before the digital age. Will there really be spaceflight startups? The kind that begin in a garage and end up revolutionizing how we transport goods -- and maybe even people -- beyond the atmosphere? Well, yes. In fact, there already are.?