????航天及國防咨詢公司蒂爾集團航天研究總監馬可?卡塞雷斯稱：“請牢記，無論什么時候開始發射更多衛星，只要能大幅降低發射服務的價格，帶來更多新入行的企業，就會產生大量連帶效應。這樣就能獲得一個規模不斷擴大的市場和各種細分市場，還能使投資者認真考量SpaceX及其他類似公司。風投就會像1990年代那樣重新涌入這個市場。”

????新興航天公司已在自己的商業計劃里大幅降低了發射成本。戴維表示，在未來十年中，航天業的重要性就好比1990年代的互聯網。它并不會立刻顛覆傳統產業的收入模式。但如果不認真思考航天探索將對自己商業模式產生的影響，以及如何充分利用這一趨勢，就會將自己置于巴諾書店當年面對亞馬遜崛起時所處的那種境地。

????“挑戰在于，要理解可循環一級推進器這類裝備對目前世界上盛行的商業模式的影響。如果你恰好是可口可樂、沃爾瑪、豐田、盧克石油這樣的企業，衛星和你目前的商業模式有何關系呢？發射成本大幅下降與你未來的商業模式有何關系？在我們看來，那些能在這兩者之間建立聯系的企業將抓住大量增長機遇，而那些無法理解這種關系的企業在未來十年可能會走下坡路，” 戴維稱。

????戴維表示，多數公司并不認為自己是“航天公司”。但在《財富》500強企業中，很難發現有幾家是和陸上資產無關的——不管是房地產、農業、交通基礎設施、能源基礎設施還是實體建筑。能用獨有方式連接所有這些資產，實時監控它們并實時獲得精確的信息，將確保21世紀的企業獲得競爭優勢。

????對那些依靠快速準確的信息，并能獨家獲取這些信息才能獲得收入的企業來說，這更是真切無疑。戴維表示：“像貝萊德集團和阿波羅公司這樣的企業想擁有自己的衛星，這難道不是顯而易見嗎？我想，如果去問華爾街上大多數基金公司和投行對此事的看法，他們肯定會說，‘航天？開什么玩笑。’”但在不久的將來，我們就會看到，隨著發射成本降低，更多衛星上天，信息量將更快增長。這將導致一些可能深刻改變金融分析本質的結果。”

????位于斯坦福德市的能源貿易商們是否會競相爭取最好的軌道來監測馬六甲海峽的油輪數量，這誰也說不準。但SpaceX公司近期火箭回收“失敗”的啟示是：占領太空就能獲得信息，下一輪太空競賽將來自于那些競相成為“航天公司”的企業。（財富中文網）

????譯者：清遠

????審校：任文科

????“Keep in mind that whenever you start launching more satellites, when you make launch services cheaper and bring new players into the market, you have a lot of spinoff effects,” Marco Caceres, director of space studies at aerospace and defense consultancy Teal Group. “You have an expanding market, you have submarkets. And you have investors taking a second, a third, a fourth look at companies like SpaceX and the ones that will follow. Venture capital will start flowing back into the market like it did in the 1990s.”

????Emerging space companies are already baking lower launch costs into their business plans. Space is to the decade ahead what the Internet was to the 1990s, NewSpace Global’s David says. It’s not necessarily going to upend your revenue streams tomorrow. But if you’re not thinking about how space access impacts your business and how to leverage it to your advantage, you’re setting yourself up as the Barnes and Noble BKS -0.16% to someone else’s Amazon AMZN -0.94% .

????“The challenge is understanding the impact something like a reusable first stage booster will have upon a very terrestrial business model today,” NewSpace Global’s David says. “If you’re Coca-Cola, if you’re Walmart, if you’re Toyota, if you’re Lukoil—what does a satellite have to do with your business model today? What will falling launch costs have to do with your business model in the future? From our perspective, the companies capable of connecting those dots will be able to capture tremendous financial growth opportunities. Those who fail to understand that connection to their very terrestrial business models could end up on the wrong side of financial evolution in the next decade.”

????Most companies don’t think of themselves as “space companies,” David says. But it’s hard to find a company on the Fortune 500 that isn’t intimately connected to terrestrial assets—real estate, agriculture, transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, brick and mortar facilities. The ability to connect all those assets in a proprietary way, to monitor them in realtime and generate accurate and instantaneous information about them will ensure a competitive edge for companies in the 21st century.

????That’s especially true for firms who rely on fast, accurate information—and proprietary access to that information—to generate revenue. “Is it obvious that someone like BlackRock or Apollo would care about having their own satellites?” David says. “I think if you were to poll most PE firms and IBs on Wall Street they would say, ‘Space? You gotta be kiddin’ me.’ But what we’re going to see in the near term as launch costs come down, as more satellites are lifted, is an increase in knowledge at higher frequency. That’s going to lead to results that could change the very nature of financial analysis.”

????Whether or not Stamford-based energy traders will soon find themselves jockeying for the choicest orbits from which to count oil tankers in the Strait of Malacca is anyone’s guess. But the takeaway from SpaceX’s most recent rocket recover “failure” is this: access to space is access to knowledge, and the next space race will be among companies vying to be a “space company.”