A Sea Change in Space Exploration
发布时间 2023-06-03 16:01:00 来源
摘要
Low Earth orbit now has some real estate problems. Deidre Woollard caught up with Ashlee Vance, author of “When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.” They discuss: - The new business opportunity in clearing space junk - How a self-taught engineer created a commercially successful rocket company - The massive trade-offs that space companies make by going public Companies discussed: RKLB, SPCE Host: Deidre Woollard Guest: Ashlee Vance Producer: Ricky Mulvey Engineer: Rick Engdahl
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We've gone from about 2,500 satellites in low Earth orbit in 2020, so that's like 60 years of doing stuff in space to get to that point. And by the end of this year, we'll be at around 10,000, so it's growing exponentially. It'll get to 100,000 in the next decade, quite easily, I think. And we've never dealt with anything like this.
2020年，地球低轨道的卫星数量约为2,500颗，这相当于进行了大约60年的空间活动才达到了这个水平。到今年年底，数量将达到约10,000颗，呈指数增长。我认为在未来十年内，数量将轻松达到100,000颗。我们从未面临过这样的情况。
I'm Mary Long, and that's Ashley Vance, a writer at Bloomberg and author of the new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale, The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. Deirdre Willard caught up with Vance to discuss how much failure it takes to get above the Earth's atmosphere, what life is like in outlaw space towns, and how to separate the real players from the hype in the space industry. Quick note, this conversation was recorded before Virgin Orbit announced that it was shutting down.
我是玛丽·朗，那个和我一起的是阿什利·范斯，他是彭博社的一名作家，也是新书《当天堂拍卖时，不合群的人和天才在为让太空变得可及而竞争》的作者。迪尔德丽·威拉德采访了范斯，讨论了需要多少失败才能超越地球大气层、在“违法”的太空小镇里的生活是什么样子，以及如何区分太空业的真正参与者和虚伪的人。需要注意的是，这次谈话是在维珍轨道公司宣布关闭之前录制的。
Well the book title kind of refers to what I would call a sea change in the world of getting to space. You don't need to have a government anymore to have a rocket, you just need a lot of money. So what are some of the pros and cons of the current state of space exploration? Well, a lot on both sides. Yeah, my book really is about this moment in time when basically for like 60 or 70 years we had a handful of governments that did most of the things in space, and then we moved to this billionaire phase where really SpaceX, Elon Musk are kind of the only success stories you know, writ large. And then now this era of venture capital, and so the major pros are the things that are moving much more quickly than they ever have before, the price of rockets and getting to space is coming down.
这本书的标题有点指涉太空探索领域中产生的一个所谓“巨变”。现在，你不需要再依赖政府，只需要大量的资金，就可以拥有火箭了。那么当前太空探索的优势和劣势是什么呢？其实两者都很多。我的书集中讲述的是这个历史时刻：60-70年间，几个政府在太空探索领域占据主导地位，然后发展到亿万富翁层面，现在则处在风险投资主导的时代。这个主导权的转变给太空探索带来了重大的机遇和挑战。优势主要在于太空探索的发展速度比以往更快，火箭价格降低了，进入太空的门槛也降低了。
Same thing for satellites, they're cheaper and able to do a lot more, and as a result we're sending up exponentially more satellites and building this giant computing infrastructure in low earth orbit. You know the downside is that this is frenetic, it's a total change in the power structures of how space has operated. There's going to be some winners and losers in all this, and we're not sure how the losers somewhere like maybe Russia might react. And you know this technology that we're putting in space is very powerful, there's a lot of good that comes with it, but also you know a number of challenges as well. And also potentially a lot of risk for investors in some of this as well.
同样的情况也适用于卫星，它们更便宜、能够完成更多的任务，因此我们正在向空间发射越来越多的卫星，并在低地球轨道建立这个巨大的计算基础设施。缺点是这非常狂热，这是太空操作权力结构的彻底变化。在这一切中，将会有一些赢家和输家，我们不确定输家（如俄罗斯）会有什么反应。我们正在将这项技术投入到太空中去，这项技术非常强大，其中有很多好处，但也有一些挑战和许多投资者的潜在风险。
Right, we didn't even get to the business models yet, of which there's many, many, many questions as to sort of who's real and also what this looks like in the long term. You're subtitle for the book, it's misfits and geniuses racing to put space within reach. I am such a sucker for misfits, there's a ton of them in this book, there's a whole house full of them in the rainbow mansion. It's kind of this Silicon Valley communal utopia.
没错，我们甚至还没有开始谈论商业模式，有很多很多问题需要解决，比如谁是真正的实现者，以及这在长期看来会有何样的样貌。你本书的副标题是“追逐把空间纳入视野的不合群者和天才们”，我太喜欢不合群的人了，这本书里有很多，彩虹公馆里有一整屋子的不合群者，它是种类似于硅谷共同体的乌托邦。
What role did Rainbow Mansion play in the founding of Planet Labs? A huge role and also in the founding of this book, this was kind of the first story that I really, a group of people that I got interested in. So you know, their NASA Ames is Silicon Valley's NASA center and it had some bright spots in the past and then fallen on sort of pretty slow times. And then all of a sudden in the early part of the 2000s, it had this kind of a kind of classic director who came in, Pete Warden, and he hired a bunch of 20-somethings to try and think of space differently.
彩虹大厦在Planet Labs的创立中扮演了什么角色？它起着重要的作用，同时也在这本书的创作中扮演了角色，这是我真正感兴趣的第一个群体的故事。NASA Ames是硅谷的NASA中心，在过去曾经有过一些辉煌时期，但之后陷入了相当缓慢的时期。然后在2000年代早期，它迎来了一个典型的主管Pete Warden，他雇了一些20多岁的人来不同地思考宇宙空间。
And so there was this group of friends that formed. They were all these young space nerds and a number of them lived in this place called the Rainbow Mansion, which was a commune, like you mentioned, I mean it was a mansion, but it was full of people. And they would work at NASA by day and then come back to the Rainbow Mansion and discuss their big ideas about what they wanted to do with space. And it was during some of these late night discussions over a scotch or a shared meal that they came up with this idea to really rethink how satellites are made. And I'm sure we can get into it, but to build this enormous constellation of imaging satellites that would photograph the Earth in ways we'd never thought were possible before.
于是，这群朋友结成了一个团体。他们都是一些年轻的太空迷，其中一些人住在一个叫彩虹庄园的地方，这是一个共和社区，就像你所提到的，那是一座大厦，但里面住满了人。他们白天在NASA工作，晚上回到彩虹庄园，讨论他们关于太空的大想法。就是在一些晚上喝一杯苏格兰威士忌或共享一顿饭时，他们想出了这个重新思考卫星制造的想法。我相信我们可以深入探讨，但是构建一个庞大的成像卫星星座，以前我们从未想过的方式拍摄地球的照片。
Well, you just mentioned Pete Warden, and you had a quote towards the end of the book. You said like if it was a fictional book that he would sort of be the kind of supervillain mastermind behind all of it, why is that?
好的，你刚刚提到了皮特·沃登，并且你在书的结尾引用了一句话。你说如果这是一本虚构的书，他会成为所有这一切背后的超级反派大脑，这是为什么呢？
简单易懂地表达就是：你刚才提到了皮特·沃登，并在书的结尾引用了一句话，说如果这是一本虚构小说，那么他会是背后的超级反派大脑。为什么这么说？
Well, Pete Warden, he's one of the older characters in the book, and so he's got this long history. He's an astrophysicist by training, which seems straightforward enough, but he worked in the, he became a general in the Air Force. He worked on the Star Wars Missile Defense Shield. He worked on a lot of Black Ops operations.
好的，皮特·沃登是本书中的老角色之一，因此他有着悠久的历史。他是一名天体物理学家，看起来似乎很简单，但他在空军中晋升为将军。他曾参与“星球大战”导弹防御盾的工作，也参与了许多黑色行动。
One of his main goals in life was to help push along something called responsive space, which is what the Defense Department has desired for decades. And that's the ability to send, if a war breaks out somewhere, like say Afghanistan, you want to send up a rocket the very next day that puts a satellite or a few of them right over Afghanistan to watch everything that's happening all the time.
他人生中的主要目标之一就是推动响应式空间的发展，这也是国防部几十年来一直渴望的。这种能力可以在发生战争（比如在阿富汗）后的第二天就派遣一枚火箭，将卫星或多颗卫星直接放置在阿富汗上空，以随时观察一切。
And so in that sense, people called him sort of Darth Vader. You know, he'd done the Star Wars thing. He was trying to militarize space. The people he'd hired to NASA, these youngsters, were quite opposite. They were idealists. They were, I call them space hippies. They definitely did not want to see space get militarized.
因此从这个意义上说，人们称他类似于“达斯·维达”。你知道，他做了“星球大战”的事情。他试图军事化太空。他雇佣给NASA的这些年轻人恰恰相反。他们是理想主义者。我称他们为太空嬉皮士。他们绝对不想看到太空被军事化。
But Pete, to his credit, he's just not one of these people who wanted, wanted yes, yes people around him. You know, he wanted new ideas. And so he kind of built his environment where these kids could go charge after cheap rockets and cheap satellites for their idealistic missions. You know, by the time you get to the end of the book, I just argue that maybe Pete knew what he was doing all along and sort of ended up getting the technology he wanted just by pushing this group of kids to chase after what they thought they wanted.
但彼得非常值得钦佩的是，他不是那种想要朝他喊好的人围绕着他的人。你知道，他想要新的想法。因此他创造了一种环境，让这些孩子们可以追求物美价廉的火箭和卫星，为他们的理想主义使命奋斗。你知道，当你读到了书的结尾，我认为也许彼得一直知道自己在做什么，并通过推动这群孩子追求他们所想要的东西最终得到了他想要的技术。
It seems like the space race, it attracts a certain type of personality. I love the drive, Peter Beck. He's this new Zeeland guy. He's this kind of mad genius out of nowhere. Decides to build rockets, no connections, no training, no experience for a long time, no money. He kind of pulls it off. Rocket Labs now major player.
它看起来像太空竞赛，它吸引了一定类型的个性。我喜欢那种激情，比如彼得·贝克。他是一个来自新西兰的家伙，是这种从无到有的疯狂天才。他决定建造火箭，没有人脉，没有培训，很长时间没有经验，没有钱。但他还是做到了。火箭实验室现在成为了一个主要的玩家。
What part of that whole story did you find most improbable kind of about his journey? It's hard to know where to start. For people who don't know, there's SpaceX, which has launched hundreds of rockets. And then there's Rocket Lab, which is Peter's company. It's launched about 40. After that, the number drops off pretty quick as far as commercial rocket players go. And so Rocket Lab is the real deal.
在整个故事中，你觉得他的旅程最不可信的部分是什么？很难说从哪里开始说起。对于不了解情况的人来说，有一个名为SpaceX的公司，已经发射了数百次火箭。然后有一个叫作Rocket Lab的公司，这就是彼得的公司。它已经发射了大约40次。在商业火箭公司方面，其数量很快就会下降。因此，Rocket Lab是真正的实力派。
Like you mentioned, New Zealand has no aerospace history at all. They were not a space-faring nation. They barely have a military. No experience to rely on. Peter Beck didn't go to college. He worked as a apprentice, a dishwasher maker. And so certainly not some like MIT, PhD or anything like that. He just happened to be this very driven engineer. These driven sort of hands-on kind of guy. He would make his own propellants in a shed outside of his house, his own rocket engines, in a shed outside of his house.
就像你所提到的那样，新西兰根本没有航空航天的历史。他们不是一个航天国家。他们几乎没有军事经验可供依赖。彼得·贝克没有上过大学。他曾经是蒸碗机制造者的学徒。他肯定不是什么麻省理工大学的博士或者其他专家。他只是一个非常有动力的工程师。一个积极主动、实践型的人。他会在他家外面的一个小屋里自己制作火箭燃料和火箭发动机。
And so history would tell you this should not work. He should not be able to form a rocket startup. But he really does kind of stand alone as the one person who's done this as a one-person outfit for a while. And then obviously got some venture capital money and built this into a massive multi-billion-dollar company. But I think of all the stories in the book as just the most unlikely. That has to be one of the most unlikely in the last 50 years, 60 years.
历史告诉我们，这应该不会奏效。他不应该能够成立一家火箭初创公司。但是他确实是唯一一个独自一人做这件事情并且长时间坚持下来的人。然后显然他得到了一些风险投资的资金，并将其发展成为一家价值数十亿美元的公司。但我认为在这本书里，这个故事是最不可能发生的之一。这可能是过去50年或60年中最不可思议的故事之一。
Yeah, I just, that was one of my favorite parts. And I liked it in the rocket lab section. He does this thing. He tosses this thing, the humanity star into space. It's kind of this disco ball. It becomes the brightest object in space until it eventually falls out of orbit and burns up. But it's a good example of the idea that just because we can put something into orbit, maybe we shouldn't.
是的，那是我最喜欢的部分之一。我喜欢它在火箭实验室部分。他做了一件事。他把这个东西——人类之星扔到了太空中。它有点像迪斯科球。它成为了太空中最明亮的物体，直到最终从轨道上坠落并烧毁。但这是一个很好的例子，说明仅仅因为我们可以把某些东西送入轨道中，也许我们不应该这样做。
And you're also talking the book a little bit about Leo Labs, which is kind of starting to track space debris. As someone who like looks up at the sky at night, how concerned should we be about this growing issue of space junk and so much being put up into the lower orbit?
你在书中也谈到了Leo Labs，这是一家开始追踪空间碎片的公司。作为一个经常在夜晚仰望天空的人，我们应该对这种不断增长的空间垃圾和低轨道上的大量部署非常关注吗？
Well, this is part of the reason I wrote the book, a large part. The book, I would say, is optimistic overall. But I wanted people to know. We've gone from about 2,500 satellites in low Earth orbit in 2020. So that's like 60 years of doing stuff in space to get to that point. And by the end of this year, we'll be at around 10,000.
嗯，这是我写这本书的原因之一，而且是很重要的原因。我可以说，整个书的主题是乐观的。但是我希望让人们知道，我们已经在低地球轨道上拥有了大约2,500颗卫星，这样的成就花费了大约60年的时间。而到今年年底，我们在这个轨道上的卫星数量将达到约10,000个。
So it's growing exponentially. It'll get to 100,000 in the next decade quite easily, I think. And we've never dealt with anything like this. I mean, that 2,500 number barely grew year by year. It was quite static. And so this company, Leo Labs, not only do they track, they have this antenna system. They're a startup. They've built unique antennas to see stuff in space.
它以指数级增长。我认为它在未来十年将很容易达到10万。我们从未处理过这样的事情。我的意思是，那2,500的数字几乎每年都没有增长。它相当静态。因此，这家名为Leo Labs的公司不仅跟踪，而且拥有这个天线系统。他们是一家初创公司。他们建造了独特的天线，以便在太空中观察物体。
They don't just track the objects. They already coordinate the movement of these things. So space access, satellites will talk to planet labs, satellites, and maneuver out of each other's way. And Leo Labs helps coordinate all of this. So it's in everybody's best interest to make sure this works. Some kind of cascading debris field would undermine every bit of new business. And also things like GPS technology and stuff like that.
他们不仅仅追踪物体，也协调物体的运动。因此，太空进入的卫星将与星球实验室的卫星通信，并避免彼此碰撞。而Leo Labs负责协调这一切。因此，让这项技术成功运作符合每个人的利益。一场类似级联碎片场的灾难将破坏所有新兴业务，以及GPS技术等相关事物。
But people should know, you know, the night sky, as you've seen it, since you were growing up is changing and will change more dramatically. We'll see satellites moving all the time. And this is, I wanted people to start having this discussion like we are right now and be aware of what's coming because I don't think most people have been paying attention. I wonder sometimes if the next iteration of space businesses starts to become businesses that clean up the things that other businesses have put up there.
但是人们应该知道，你从小到大看到的夜空正在改变，并且将发生更明显的变化。我们会一直看到卫星移动。我希望人们开始像我们现在这样讨论，并意识到即将发生的事情，因为我认为大多数人都没有关注。有时候我会想，下一代太空企业是否开始成为清理其他企业放置的物品的企业。
There already are startups trying to do that now. There's some satellite companies. They want to put up satellites. And then their satellites also have this kind of junk clearing sort of ability. And then there's some that are just pure. We want to go up there and try to manage all this. I mean, my book is not about tourism. It's not about colonies on Mars. It is about lower Earth orbit, the space right above our heads. It's really presented as this new real estate. And, you know, we sort of know what happens when humans discover some new place, right? It's like we rush in and there's already companies trying to claim their territory and set up shop. And you just, you don't want to rush in so quickly that it kind of ruins it forever, which is a real concern here.
现在已经有一些初创公司试图实现这个目标。有一些卫星公司想要发射卫星，这些卫星还具有清理太空垃圾的能力。还有一些公司只是想要管理整个太空环境。我的书不是关于旅游或者火星殖民地的。它是关于低地轨道，也就是我们头上的空间，被呈现为一个新的房地产。你知道人类发现新的地方时会发生什么，对吧？我们会急匆匆地涌入，并且已经有公司在争夺领土并建立店铺。但是我们不应该太快涌入，否则可能会永远破坏它，这是一个真正的担忧。
Yeah. Well, speaking of real estate, one of the things about this book and launching rockets in general, you kind of need a lot of room, right? So it seems like if you went everywhere, you went to the wilds of Alaska, New Zealand, obviously the Mojave Desert, which is sort of like the place where all the space stuff is really happening. Give us a little taste of what life is like in these sort of like outlaw space towns.
说起房地产，这本书和发射火箭一般需要很大的空间，对吧？所以，如果你去哪里，像阿拉斯加的荒野、新西兰，当然还有莫哈韦沙漠，这似乎是所有太空活动真正发生的地方。请给我们一点了解这些所谓的非法太空城镇的生活是什么样子的。
Yeah. I was a French Guillatas, Fallboard, India. You name it. The big launch sites tend to be near the equator. The Earth spins faster at the equator, so it gives it the rockets a bit of boost so they can carry more stuff. Obviously, tends to be by the water, so if they blow up, people and objects don't get hurt. But as a result, you also end up in places that tend to be, frankly, quite poor and remote and exotic. And so it's just unlike what I'm not a space geek by nature. It's totally like whatever impressions I had in my head, which was like you're going to the most sci-fi, high tech, clean sort of facility imaginable.
是的，我曾在法属圭亚那、福尔布拉和印度等地工作。大型发射场通常靠近赤道。赤道上的地球自转速度更快，因此给火箭提供了一点动力，可以搭载更多的物品。显然，这些发射场通常位于水边，这样即使发生爆炸，也不会伤害到人们和物品。但是，这也导致这些地方通常相对贫穷、偏远和异国情调。因此，这与我头脑中的印象完全相反，而我本来不是一个太喜欢太空的极客。我以为这些发射场会是最具科幻感、高科技和干净整洁的设施。
Usually I would go in like in India. There's kind of goats and monkeys and all sorts of animals just cruise it around the rocket launch sites. The buildings look like an ARFROM sort of like the 1970s. Part of it's a reflection that this space boom that happened in the 50s and 60s, things got stuck. It just didn't change much after that. And then part of it is just a reflection of where these things end up. You don't put like a rocket launch site in the middle of Los Angeles for obvious reasons.
通常情况下，我会像在印度一样进入这个地方。那里有各种各样的动物，比如山羊和猴子，它们在火箭发射点附近四处晃荡。这些建筑看起来像是ARFROM（一种建筑风格），有点像70年代的感觉。这部分原因是由于50年代和60年代发生的太空热潮，事情没有太大的变化。另一方面，这也反映了这些地方所处的位置。显然，不可能在洛杉矶市中心建造火箭发射场。
Yeah, definitely not. Well, the story of Astra in the book, to my mind, it kind of illustrates how much failure is involved in getting things into space. Because you've got Chris Kemp, he's this kind of charismatic, brilliant, maybe a little bit of a wild man. He's pushing this team really hard and these rockets just keep failing over and over again. And you called going public for both Kemp and for Astra, kind of this Faustian bargain. So I want to know why was that true? Is it still true? And with everything that's going on with Astra now and what just happened with Virgin Orbit, what do you think is next for Astra?
嗯，绝对不是。在我看来，书中阿斯特拉的历史，有点说明了在将东西送入太空方面有多少失败和风险。因为你有克里斯·坎普，他是这种富有魅力、才华横溢、也许有点野性的人。他非常努力地推动着这个团队，但这些火箭一次又一次地失败。你曾称，对克里斯和阿斯特拉而言，走向公开发行这是一种孔雀东南飞的交易。那么，我想知道为什么是这样？这仍然是如此吗？考虑到现在阿斯特拉正在发生的一切，以及维珍轨道刚刚发生的事情，你认为阿斯特拉接下来会发生什么？
Yeah, it's this incredible time. Even SpaceX is still private, which is a reflection of the traditions in this industry. We have not seen public space companies until the SPAC craze of what, like 2021, I think was kind of the peak spackness. And there was all this cheap money. So the Faustian bargain was look, we need money, we could get hundreds of millions of dollars.
是的，这是一个令人难以置信的时代。即使 SpaceX 仍然是私有公司，这也反映了这个产业的传统。直到 SPAC 狂潮出现，比如在 2021 年左右，我们还没有看到公共航天公司。现在有很多廉价的资金可供利用。因此，出现了这个抉择，我们需要钱，我们可以获得数亿美元的资金。
SPACs were amazing because the regulations are a little flimsier around them. You could promise all kinds of incredible things about how often you're going to launch and all this stuff without getting into too much trouble. And so it was this huge opportunity for these companies.
SPAC（空白支票公司）之所以惊人，是因为它们的规定相对较松弛。你可以承诺各种惊人的事情，比如你将会有多频繁地推出产品等等，而不会因此太麻烦。因此，这是这些公司的巨大机会。
I argue in the book, and I think this is very true, is that most investors barely understand the commercial space economy. And like the average retail investor definitely does not really understand still kind of how hard this is and the mechanics of it. So a company like Astra is public. So now they have to start doing what used to be private hidden launches right out in the open.
我在书中提出并坚信，大多数投资者几乎不了解商业太空经济。与普通零售投资者肯定不真正理解这种行业的艰难和机制。因此，像Astra这样的公司已经公开上市。现在，他们必须开始在公开场合进行之前私下进行的隐秘发射。
And there is no more binary product launch than flying an explosive into the air. And it either gets the space or it blows up. This is not like some software product that you put out there and get months to see if it gets some kind of adoption. And so you see these companies, stock prices just oscillating up and down based on these launches.
没有比把炸药飞入空中更具二元性的产品推出方式了。要么成功发射到空间，要么就会爆炸。这和发布一些软件产品不同，你需要几个月时间来观察是否被广泛接受。因此，你会看到这些公司的股价根据这些发射轮流上涨和下跌。
I think Virgin Orbit recently filed for bankruptcy, although there's rumors that they're kind of making a comeback. But I think we saw this huge initial wave, particularly there were a lot of, you know, rockets kind of come in small, medium and large. And we got inundated with small rocket companies that really were not that different from each other. So I think we're going to see kind of a clean out of a lot of those because we probably only need a couple.
我认为维珍轨道最近申请破产，不过有传言说他们正在东山再起。但我们看到了一个巨大的初始浪潮，特别是有很多小、中、大型的火箭。我们被淹没在了各种各样的小型火箭公司中，这些公司实际上并没有太大的差异。所以我认为我们将会看到很多这样的公司退出市场，因为我们可能只需要几个。
And then I really think, so I think we're going to see like a bit of a pullback. But then I think, as I argue in the book, this is not like a failed experiment. Commercial space is going to happen. And so I think we just see a second wave of new players who really try to learn lessons from what came before.
然后我真的认为，我们可能会看到一些回调。但是，正如我在书中所主张的那样，这并不是一个失败的实验。商业太空旅游将会成为现实。因此，我认为我们会看到第二波的新进入者，他们会从之前的经验中吸取教训。
And the industry is matured where a rocket company that started today would not have to make all of its own engines. There's injured companies. You know, there's different suppliers now. And so it's already sort of a new regime if you want to second crack at this.
这个行业已经成熟了，一个今天刚刚开始的火箭公司不必要自己生产所有的发动机。现在已经有很多供应商了。因此，如果你想重新尝试，情况已经发生了变化。
Well, I have to ask you about your adventures with Max Poliakoff because, you know, he's the man who rescued and really rebirth firefly aerospace. But in a book full of, as we've seen, really colorful characters, he might just be the most colorful and maybe controversial. So is he the Ukrainian Elon Musk or something else entirely?
好吧，我必须问问你与马克斯·波林科夫的冒险，因为你知道，他是救援并真正让萤火航天公司重生的人。但在这本充满了色彩鲜艳人物的书中，他可能是最引人注目和有争议的人物。那么他是乌克兰的埃隆·马斯克还是完全不同的人呢？
I guess he's close to that or he's on the verge of it. You know, so but Max is, he grew up at the, as the Soviet Empire was kind of collapsing. His parents had worked on the Soviet space program. He was, he was a OBGYN coming out of university and then turned into this, the software multi millionaire.
我猜他接近成功或者就在边缘。你知道的，马克斯成长在苏联帝国即将崩溃的时期。他的父母曾在苏联的航天计划工作过。他出自大学的妇产科医生，后来成为了软件产业的百万富翁。
And yeah, to your point, he, he bought firefly. It was a small rocket maker in Texas that went bankrupt. Max came in. And like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the sense that he put $250 million in a, to firefly, which, which it's very hard to find another, you know, individual that's put anything close to that into a rocket company.
是的，你说得对，他买下了萤火虫公司。这是一家小型火箭制造商，位于德克萨斯州并已破产。马克斯加入了其中。和埃隆·马斯克以及杰夫·贝索斯一样，他投入了2.5亿美元到萤火虫公司，这在投资火箭公司的个人中是非常难得的。
The story of Max is it's like part comedy, part tragedy. I think right as firefly starts to become successful, the US government begins to raise all of these, these questions, which I thought were quite flimsy, really. I mean, the, the US government's basic contention is that he's Ukrainian and Ukraine is close to Russia and that he might one day become a Russian asset and, and funnel American aerospace technology to Russia.
马克斯的故事就像是一部半喜剧半悲剧的电影。我认为就在萤火虫开始取得成功的时候，美国政府开始提出了所有这些毫无根据的问题。我觉得，美国政府的基本观点是他是乌克兰人，乌克兰和俄罗斯的关系密切，他可能有一天会成为俄罗斯的资产，并向俄罗斯输送美国的航空航天技术。
I, I, if this is true, he is the most extraordinary undercover agent I've ever seen because, you know, he's been funding the Ukrainian war effort since the war began and it seems to hate Russia with a passion. But yes, so this, you know, I, I had this bizarre opportunity to live through all of this with Max with him, him trying to build this company with the US basically throwing him out of the company and out of the country and go into Ukraine with him and, and the whole thing.
我要说，如果这是真的，他就是我见过最不同寻常的卧底特工了，因为你知道，自乌克兰战争开始以来，他一直在资助乌克兰的战争努力，并且似乎非常痛恨俄罗斯。但是是的，我跟Max一起经历了这一切，他试图与美国合作建立这个公司，但最终被公司和国家抛弃，然后我跟着他去了乌克兰，整个经历非常离奇。
And then he sort of this like picked up his marbles and now he's in Scotland, right? He is, he's in Scotland, he's, you know, he's sort of, he had all these business software and online business ventures that he's, he's refocused on. He owns a satellite company in South Africa. I mean, he still has space in his blood and I don't think we've seen the last of, of Max Pliakov in space. We were already talking about some of these rocket companies that are struggling. I'll be curious to see if Max swoops in and takes a second crack at this.
然后他像是把他的弹珠拿出来，现在他在苏格兰，对吧？ 是的，他在苏格兰，他现在专注于他所有的商业软件和在线业务冒险。他在南非拥有一家卫星公司。我觉得他的血液中仍然流淌着太空的激情，我不认为我们已经看到Max Pliakov在太空中的最后一面。我们已经在谈论一些正在挣扎的火箭公司。我很好奇是否Max会闪电般出现并再次尝试这个领域。
What you just said there is true about when space gets in your blood because that's, that's sort of what, what comes through in the book. And it, you know, it's come through with the, with the billionaires. Your book isn't about the space tourism race, but I kind of got to ask you because you have such insight on all of them in this billionaire space race with Bezos, Musk, Richard Branson, still is kind of in there. If this were a horse race, you could only bet on one of them. Who would you put your money on?
你刚才说的话是正确的，关于太空探索的热情在你的血液中流淌，这也是你的书中所表现的。 而且，这也可以看到亿万富翁们的热情。虽然你的书不是关于太空旅游的竞赛，但我还是想问一下，鉴于你对贝佐斯、马斯克、理查德·布兰森等亿万富翁的深入了解，如果这是一场赛马比赛，你只能押注其中一个人，你会把你的钱押在谁身上？
Everything I possibly could obtain on Elon, I mean, you know, SpaceX is, is, is running laps around not only their rivals, but entire nations. Branson's companies, you know, are, are barely existing and, and Blue Origin has had some wins with space tourism, but has been trying to send satellites into orbit pretty much as long as SpaceX has and has never sent one in, in SpaceX is sending them up by the thousands per year and launching rockets almost every day. And so yeah, no, that would be, you could feasibly bet on, depends, you know, on your time horizon. If you could, you could get into Bloor, which now would maybe, maybe have some surprise wins.
我尽可能地了解了埃隆（马斯克），也就是说，你知道的，SpaceX不仅超过了他们的竞争对手，还超过了整个国家。布兰森的公司，你知道的，几乎不存在，Blue Origin虽然在太空旅游方面赢得了一些胜利，但几乎与SpaceX同样长时间一直在试图将卫星送入轨道，并且从未成功过，而SpaceX每年都会发送成千上万个卫星，并几乎每天都会发射火箭。所以是的，你可以根据你的时间范围进行投注。如果你能够进入Bloor，现在可能会有一些意外的胜利。
Well, one of my colleagues wanted me to ask this. So in 2018, you did an interview with, with us at the Fool and you said that SpaceX was Musk's baby, that Tesla was kind of foisted on him. Now he's got Twitter and he's sort of actively said that that has definitely been foisted on him too. He felt like he had to buy it. So he's got those companies. He's got certainly some other companies as well. He's kind of all over the place. How do you see him splitting his focus and how important do you think, looking back between 2018 and now, how important do you think SpaceX is to him? Has that shifted over time?
嗯，我的一个同事想让我问一下这个问题。所以在2018年，你接受了我们在Fool的采访，你说SpaceX是马斯克的孩子，而特斯拉是强行推给他的。现在他有了Twitter，他也表明那也是被迫的。他感觉他必须购买它。所以他有那些公司。他肯定还有其他的公司。他很忙碌。你如何看待他分散注意力，回顾2018年至今，你认为SpaceX对他有多重要？这个想法是否随着时间的推移而发生了变化？
I think it's still his baby and his heart. I've been shocked to see how all-consuming Twitter has been. I guess he saw it as, as, in this emergency state where it was burning through cash and he had to be very hands-on to deal with that and, and deal with all the debt and, and these payments. Um, it's a little sad to me in some ways. I just don't think it's the best use of his time. I think SpaceX has accomplished so much and is still just starting this new chapter with Starship and even bigger rocket that actually can get to Mars and take a lot of stuff and people there, which has really been his life's goal. So, um, you know, I think he's torn at the moment. If I'm honest, I, I think SpaceX also operates quite well without his day-to-day involvement. He seems to be extremely concerned about AI technology as well. And so I just wonder if we're entering. This is something I never saw coming. I really thought this guy who had his finger in so many pies were trying to pair things down over time to just concentrate on SpaceX and we're obviously going in the opposite direction right now. So I don't know for sure how this plays out.
我认为Twitter对他来说仍然是他的心血。但是，看到Twitter消耗他如此多的精力，我感到震惊。我猜他认为这是紧急状态下的一个问题，因为Twitter一直在燃烧现金，他必须全力以赴应对这个问题，并应对所有的债务和付款。从某些方面来说，这让我有点难过。我认为这不是他时间的最佳利用。SpaceX已经取得了如此多的成就，并且仍然在开始新的篇章，包括Starship和更大的火箭，可以真正到达火星，运输许多的物质和人员，这是他一生的目标。所以，你知道的，我认为他此刻很犹豫。老实说，我认为即使没有他每天身体力行的参与，SpaceX也可以运转得很好。他似乎也非常关注AI技术。因此，我不知道我们是否正在进入一个我从未想象过的时代。我真的以为这个喜欢尝试新鲜事物的家伙会逐渐减少他的饼图，并集中精力于SpaceX，但我们现在显然走向了相反的方向。所以我不确定这会有什么结果。
Yeah. Well, overall in the book, one of the sort of takeaways for me is about how much failure is involved. Uh, you know, we talked about Astra. Uh, certainly Firefly has gone up and down with all of these launches and so much money being spent and so many failures. Do you think that over time we get better and better at this? And there are fewer failures because right now it hasn't quite seemed like that. Like things will get a little better and then there'll be a rash of failures and then it seems like everybody goes back and iterates. How do you kind of see, uh, how, how, how is the failure rate going to go?
嗯，总的来说，在这本书中，我觉得一个重要的启示是失败涉及多少方面。我们谈到了Astra。当然，火星牛仔的各种发射都有起伏，耗费了大量的资金并经历了很多失败。您认为随着时间的推移，我们会变得越来越好，失败会减少，因为目前似乎还没有出现这种情况。似乎事情会变得稍微好一点，然后就会出现连续的失败，然后所有人都会回去重复。您如何看待失败率会如何发展？
Still very difficult. It's that it's that first getting the first rocket is very hard and then getting some kind of repeatability is very hard. But if you step back for a second, we do have just massive leaps forward for it used to be all the space programs were really government run to some degree and the best really launched maybe once a month over the course of a year. I mean, that was that was success. SpaceX currently is on a pace for about once every two days and probably could get to almost once a day if it wanted to. Um, it's sending it sent 38 people up over the last two and a half years from from nothing. Rocket lab launches can launch about once every week and is trying to get to once every three or so days and has three rocket pads at its disposal now. So, um, yes, you know, some of these other companies are at an earlier stage, but when we look at SpaceX and rocket lab is the two kind of premier commercial space players. It's a totally new regime than what happened before. Um, so it's still very hard, but definitely does not even make a go at this before you did have to be a nation state. You did have to have thousands of people billions of dollars. And so now, you know, much, much smaller teams and much less capital required to give us a shot and we're going to see just this year.
尽管仍然很困难，但首先获得第一颗火箭非常难，然后获得某种程度的重复性也很难。但如果退后一步，我们可以看到，过去所有的太空计划都是由政府运作的，并且最好的成就也只能在一年的时间内成功推出一次。目前，SpaceX每两天就可以成功一次，如果需要的话，可能会接近每天一次的速度。Rocket Lab每周可以成功一次，正在努力将推出速度缩短到每三天左右，并拥有三个火箭发射平台。因此，尽管其他公司处于早期阶段，但当我们看到SpaceX和Rocket Lab这两家顶尖商业太空公司时，我们可以看到一个全新的时代。虽然仍然非常困难，但现在不需要像以前那样成为国家，也不需要拥有数千人和数十亿美元的财力。所以现在只需要更小的团队和更少的资本，我们就有了机会。今年我们会看到更多的进展。
I mean, there's about, I think, 10 on the order between five and 10 rocket startups that are launching for the first time. So this is from like, you know, nothing 15 years ago to quite a number of players.
我的意思是，我认为在5至10个火箭初创公司中，有大约10个即将首次发射。因此，这是从15年前什么都没有到现在有相当数量的参与者。
As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about and the monthly full may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy stocks based solely on what you hear.
一如既往地，节目参与者可能对他们谈论的股票有兴趣，月度报告可能会正式对某些股票提出推荐或反对意见。因此，请不要仅根据所听到的内容购买股票。
I'm Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
我是玛丽·朗。谢谢你们的倾听。明天见。再见。