下次碰到谷歌著名的“登月項目”負責人阿斯特羅·特勒，當他想溜過去時，咱們說好要問問他關于薩拉·斯潘格羅的事。斯潘格羅是太空工程師，經營著一家名叫Swarm Technologies的小型初創公司。她和聯合創始人、蘋果公司老臣本·隆米爾的大膽設想幾乎就是一次成本要低得多的“登月”。

全球有幾十億較富裕的網民，但也有幾十億人缺乏前者的資源和基礎設施，找到讓這些人上網的最佳途徑是人們幾十年來的夢想。人造衛星看來好像是個顯而易見的答案，但20世紀90年代的那些超大工程均未成行，埃隆·馬斯克的Starlink等一些新方案則需要數千顆人造衛星（具體到Starlink，這個數字是1.2萬顆），這就得很多很多次成功地發射火箭，需要耗資數十億美元。馬斯克和孫正義的OneWeb等方面都認為，商業化能極大地降低火箭發射成本，而摩爾定律可以讓人造衛星實現令人難以置信的小型化，二者疊加在一起，或許就可以帶來一個在經濟上可行的解決方案吧。

Swarm Technologies的想法是把這些都做到極致。斯潘格羅和隆米爾靠的不是所謂鞋盒大小的立方星。Swarm Technologies的衛星更小，差不多像一塊烤奶酪三明治。其天才之處在于他們發明了一種不需要推進器或噴射器就可以操縱衛星的方法（“正在申請專利”），他們用的是太空中的各種力量，如地球的磁場和太陽輻射。這就是Swarm Technologies的衛星能如此輕薄的原因。和斯潘格羅交流時，她對我的湖邊隱喻表示贊同，我說Swarm Technologies的衛星是水上的帆船，而普通衛星是用汽車運到位的。Swarm Technologies衛星的體積和質量甚至只有與之競爭的小衛星的十二分之一，將其送入軌道的成本也只有后者的十二分之一。該公司的方案是用2500萬美元和18個月來打造一個低成本網絡，從而為世界上至少一部分地區提供網絡連接，它非常適于發送短信或者從不斷擴大的物聯網中收集數據。Swarm Technologies在A輪融資中正好籌集了2500萬美元，但這不是巧合。斯潘格羅說，他們的目標是“解決互聯網的全球平價連接問題”。PayPal前首席運營官、Yammer首席執行官，同時也是領投Swarm Technologies的風投資本家大衛·薩克斯補充道：“在世界上任何地點便捷而廉價地連接任何設備是一種變革性能力，以前從未有過。”

The next time one of us runs into Astro Teller, the head of Google’s famed “Moonshot factory,” as he skates by let’s agree to ask him about Sara Spangelo. She’s the aerospace engineer who runs a little startup called Swarm Technologies. And her big brainstorm, created with co-founder and Apple veteran Ben Longmier, is almost a literal moonshot at a much cheaper price.

People have been dreaming for decades about the best way to bring online the next couple of billion people who lack the resources and infrastructure of the wealthier few billion who are already online. Space satellites seem like an obvious answer but the mega-projects of the 1990s never got off the ground and more recent plans like Elon Musk’s Starlink would require thousands of satellites (about 12,000 in his particular case) thus requiring many, many successful rocket launches and costing billions of dollars. Musk and others, including Masayoshi Son’s OneWeb, think that the incredible decrease in launch costs due to commercialization plus the incredible miniaturization of satellites due to Moore’s Law will add up to an economically viable solution. Maybe.

Swarm’s ideas take those trends to the max. Spangelo and Longmier aren’t relying on so-called cube sats, which are about the size of a shoebox. Swarm’s satellites are even smaller, more the size of a grilled cheese sandwich. The genius part is they’ve invented a way (“patent pending”) to steer their craft without thrusters or jets, instead relying on various currents coursing through space like the earth’s magnetic field and the sun’s solar radiation. That’s why they can be so small and thin. When I talked to Spangelo she agreed with my lakeside metaphor that Swarm’s satellites sail about while typical satellites motor into position. At 1/12th the volume and mass of even rival small satellites, they cost about 1/12th as much to put into orbit. Now you’re talking about spending $25 million-ish dollars and 18 months to create a low-cost network providing at least some connectivity worldwide, perfect for texting or collecting data from the growing Internet of Things. Not coincidentally, Swarm just raised that amount in its Series A funding. The goal is “solving for affordable, global internet connectivity,” Spangelo says. David Sacks, the former COO of PayPal and CEO of Yammer and now a lead VC backing Swarm, adds that “the ability to connect any device easily and cheaply, anywhere in the world is transformational—it’s never existed before.”

斯潘格羅在特勒的X實驗室中工作了一年（正式工作是“Wing”無人機項目），此前她在美國國家航空航天局的Jet Propulsion Laboratory任職。她說自己曾經提出過Swarm Technologies采用的想法，但X實驗室沒有就此采取行動。

特勒曾解釋說，X實驗室的任務是找出那些聽起來“真正科幻”的項目，這些項目也許無法實現，但如果可行，就能給世界帶來“真正、巨大、積極的意義”。從很多方面來說Swarm Technologies都符合這樣的標準，只是它提供的是低速網絡連接，而非（馬斯克、孫正義等人承諾的）寬帶，這或許是個缺陷。不過，感謝這幾家讓人驚喜的風投機構，我們會找到答案。（財富中文網）

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

Spangelo worked for a year at X under Teller (on the “Wing” drone project, officially) after a stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She says she pitched the idea behind Swarm, but X didn’t go for it.

Teller has explained that X’s role is to find projects that sound “sufficiently like science fiction” that they might not be possible and that would be “really audaciously positive” for the world if they could work. In a lot of ways, it seems like Swarm meets the test, though maybe the provision of only relatively slow connectivity instead of broadband (as Musk, Son, and others promise) was the breaking point. Still, thanks to a few enraptured VCs, we’re going to find out.