自古以来，人们对宇宙就有一种谜之向往，航天领域也因此一直备受关注，SpaceX，美国太空探索技术公司，可以说是航天领域中的佼佼者，今天就带大家近距离了解一下SpaceX的发展轨迹！
SpaceX has been putting wins on the board ever since the company—founded by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk—became the first privately funded group to put a payload in Earth orbit in 2008. Since then, the company has continued to impress, launching unmanned cargo vehicles to the International Space Station (ISS) and winning a contract from NASA to fly astronauts as well, as early as 2017. There have been setbacks—most disastrously last June when a cargo rocket bound for the ISS exploded en route, costing the crew much-needed supplies and shaking confidence in the company as a whole.
伊隆·马斯克是位连续创业者，他于2008年创立了第一家将火箭发射至地球轨道的私有集团。SpaceX公司自成立以来就一直走在航天领域的前端。从那时起，它一直都吸引着外界的瞩目。公司曾发射无人货运飞船到国际空间站（ISS），还和NASA达成协作，最早在2017年搭载了宇航员。它也遭遇过一些挫折——最严重的一次发生在去年6月，开往国际空间站(ISS)的货运火箭在途中爆炸，一时间，不仅航天员亟需的物资遭受损失，外界对公司的信心也有所动摇。
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On December 21, however, Musk bounced back, launching a payload of satellites to orbit and then recovering the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which landed upright, settling itself down under the power of its own engines, just six miles from the Cape Canaveral launch pad. Recoverable, reusable rocket stages that touch down on dry land have been talked about for decades as a way to keep costs down and speed turnaround times, but no one had been able to do it—until now.
然而，同年12月21日，马斯克重新振作起来，向卫星发射多枚火箭，对Falcon 9进行修复，此火箭可在自身发动机的作用下直立稳定着陆，距离开普敦卡纳维拉尔发射台仅6英里。几十年来，为了降低成本及加速周转时间，业界一直在尝试发明可重复使用的可回落陆地的火箭，但迄今为止还没有人能够做到这一点。
Here are several other things you need to know about the SpaceX.
关于SpaceX，你还需要了解这些。
Who is Elon Musk and why is he building rockets?
谁是伊隆·马斯克？他为何要制造火箭？
Musk (b. 1971) is a South African-born entrepreneur with degrees in business and physics from the University of Pennsylvania—and he's launching rockets because he just kind of decided to. That's the short answer, and it's not much different from the long answer. Musk has no formal training in rocketry, but he does have an eye for new markets. He made his initial fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, and has since founded Tesla Motors and SolarCity—a solar energy company.
马斯克（生于1971年）是一位南非裔企业家，他毕业于宾夕法尼亚（University of Pennsylvania）大学，拥有商科和物理学双学位——之所以走上了发射火箭这一行，无非是因为他想这么做。 这个答案看似简短，但内涵颇丰，与长篇大论的答案并无悬殊。马斯克没有接受过专业的火箭培训，但他却洞察到了新市场。 最开始，他作为PayPal的联合创始人赚到了第一桶金，后来他又成立了特斯拉汽车（Tesla Motors）和太阳能公司SolarCity。
In the early 2000s, he and others saw the opening NASA was creating by retreating from the business of launching spacecraft to low earth orbit. In 2002, he jumped into that gap, founding Space Exploration Technologies Corporation—or SpaceX—going into competition with other, generally more-established companies such as Boeing and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences.
21世纪初，美国航空航天局（NASA）放弃发射航天器到近地轨道的业务，马斯克和其他人一样看到了这方面由此形成的缺口。2002年，他抓住机会创立了Space Exploration Technologies公司（或SpaceX），开始与其他公司展开竞争，而竞争者多是一些颇有名气的公司，例如波音公司（Boeing）和弗吉尼亚州轨道科学公司（Orbital Sciences）等等。
What Have SpaceX Done That Other Companies Haven't?
SpaceX做了哪些其他公司没有做的事情?
SpaceX scored its first big headline in 2010, when it became the first private company to launch a payload into orbit and return it to Earth intact—something only government agencies like NASA or Russia's Roscosmos had done before. Its upright landing and recovery of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on Dec. 21 2015, was another first. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sent a rocket to the edge of space and landed it upright earlier this year, but it was a demonstration flight and did not achieve orbit.
2010年，SpaceX首次登上头版头条，成为第一个把火箭发射到轨道而又能完整返回地球的私营公司——这在之前，只有像美国航空航天局（NASA）或俄罗斯Roscosmos这样的政府机构才能够实现。2015年12月21日，它首次实现了Falcon 9火箭直立着陆，完成了第一阶段的恢复工作。亚马逊创始人杰夫· 贝佐斯所有的公司Blue Origin向太空边缘发射了一支火箭，虽然该火箭在今年早些时候降落了，但这只是一次示范飞行，并没有进入轨道。
Are SpaceX Rockets Special?
SpaceX的火箭很特殊吗？
Progress in rocketry is incremental. The basic science of liquid-fueled rockets hasn't changed much since the days of Robert Goddard. And solid fueled rockets—well, they go back millennia. The advances are made at the margins, and Musk is doing well there. His rockets are modular: the Falcon is a single engine model; the Falcon 9—no surprise—has nine; the Falcon Heavy, which has yet to fly, will have 27, in three clusters of nine engines. This streamlines production in the same way that building different car bodies atop similar chassis helps keep costs down for car manufacturers.
火箭的发展是渐进式的。自罗伯特·戈达德(Robert Goddard，1882-1945，火箭专家）以来，液体燃料火箭的基础科学并没有太大变化。而固体燃料火箭是早就存在的。这一领域的进步是在边缘进行的，而马斯克在这方面表现突出。他建造的火箭是模块化的：Falcon是单引擎模型；Falcon 9——正如其名——有九个引擎；尚未飞行的Falcon Heavy将拥有27个，分为三个发动机组，每组九个发动机。这好比在相似的底盘上建造不同的车身，既简化了生产，又有助于降低汽车制造商的成本。
reducing the cost of outsourcing. This keeps price per pound of payload down and quality control in house. One study, by NASA and the Air Force, estimated that the price tag for going from the initial design stages of the Falcon 9 rocket to its first flight was $440 million, about a third of what it would have cost NASA.
SpaceX的任何火箭，其部件有大约80%都是在公司自己的工厂车间制造的，从而降低了外包成本。这使得每磅航天装备的价格下降，且控制了质量。美国宇航局（NASA）和空军（Air Force）的一项研究估计，从Falcon 9火箭初始设计阶段到首次飞行，共需耗资4.4亿美元，约占美国航空航天局（NASA）花费金额的三分之一。
