The new space race

LATER this month, if all has gone according to plan, a rocket called the Falcon Heavy will take off from Cape Canaveral, in Florida (see article). Its mission is to put a sports car in orbit around the sun. The Falcon Heavy is the latest product of SpaceX, a firm founded by Elon Musk, an American billionaire. The car is Mr Musk’s own, made by Tesla, another of his businesses. SpaceX has the explicit aim, besides making money, of enabling people to travel to and colonise Mars. Before then, the Falcon Heavy may earn its keep lifting satellites and carrying tourists on “slingshot” trips around the moon.

本月晚些时候，如果一切按计划进行，一枚名为“猎鹰重型”的火箭将从佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔航天发射中心发射。它的任务是把一辆跑车放在绕太阳公转的轨道上。“猎鹰重型”是美国亿万富翁埃隆·马斯克创立的SpaceX公司的最新产品。这款车是马斯克自己的，由特斯拉制造，也是他的另一项业务。SpaceX公司有明确的目标，除了赚钱，还要让人们能去火星旅行和殖民。在此之前，猎鹰重型火箭可能会持续运载卫星，并通过“弹弓”旅行搭载游客在到月球。

Mr Musk’s ambition is to propel humanity beyond its home planet. But what is going on in space today also reflects the shifting balance of power on Earth. In the days of the space race between America and the Soviet Union, the heavens were a front in the cold war between two competing ideologies. Since then, power has not merely shifted between countries. It has also shifted between governments and individuals.

马斯克的野心是将人类推送出地球。但是今天在太空中发生的事情也反映了地球上实力的动态平衡。在美国和苏联之间的太空竞赛中，天空是两种相互对立的意识形态之间冷战的前线。从那时起，实力不仅在国家之间转移，也发生在政府和个人之间。

Wacky races

International competition is not absent from outer space. China, for instance, is making noises about Mars. Last year it deemed an expanse of desert in the country’s north-west to be sufficiently Martian to be reserved as a training ground for Mars-bound “taikonauts”. China is also moving its principal space port from the north to the south of the country, partly in order to take advantage of the extra launch velocity imparted nearer the equator by Earth’s spin. In America, meanwhile, President Donald Trump signed an order in December directing NASA, the country’s space agency, to prepare for a return of American astronauts to the moon.

国际竞争从未远离外层太空。例如，中国对火星不断发声。去年，中国西北地区的一片广阔沙漠被定为火星宇航员训练场。中国也在将其主要的太空发射基地从北部移到该国的南部，部分原因是为了利用因地球自转产生的在赤道附近的额外发射速度。与此同时，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普去年12月签署了一项命令，指示美国宇航局为美国宇航员重返月球做准备。

Yet in comparison with the 1960s, things are all quite slow-moving. Actual target dates were notably absent from Mr Trump’s announcement, and China’s ambitions for men and women on the moon have a similarly lackadaisical feel to them. This greater relaxation about matters space-related is in part because the original race was seen as a crucial test of whether capitalism or central planning was the better economic system (though NASA’s effort was probably the most centrally planned civilian operation in the history of the United States). The lack of intensity in space today reflects the calmer nature of superpower rivalry on Earth.

然而与上世纪60年代相比，一切都进展缓慢。实际的目标日期距特朗普的声明太远，而中国对人类登月的雄心也有类似的懒散感觉。这种对与太空有关的事物的松懈，部分是因为最初的竞赛被认为决定性实验，来判断是资本主义还是中央计划是更好的经济系统(尽管美国宇航局的努力可能是美国历史上最具有中央计划性的民用行为)。如今，太空中缺乏强度，反映出超级大国在地球上竞争相对平缓。

It also reflects the diffusion of wealth and technology. The number of “spacefaring” countries has increased since the 1960s, when only America and the Soviet Union counted. Now—besides China and Russia—Europe, India and Japan also have space programmes that can, and do, reach the moon and other heavenly bodies with robot spacecraft.

它也反映了财富和技术的扩散。自上世纪60年代以来，当时只有美国和苏联计算在内，“太空飞行”国家的数量有所增加。现在除了中国和俄罗斯，欧洲、印度和日本也有太空计划，可以通过机器人飞船到达月球和其他天体。

As for the idea that a private individual could run a space programme, that would have been laughable back then. Now several are. For Mr Musk has rivals, from Blue Origin (backed by Jeff Bezos of Amazon) at one end to a plucky, pint-sized startup called Rocket Lab at the other. (It hopes to make its first launch into orbit in the next few days.) Lifting satellites into orbit is a proper business, and therefore properly the business of businessfolk. The fact that a wealthy person is willing to spend his money on such a fanciful space project as going to Mars is, though, an intriguing departure—and a good measure of just how rich some people have become.

至于个人可以运行太空计划的想法，那在当时是可笑的。现在，多少也是。对于马斯克来说，他的竞争对手是来自蓝色起源(由亚马逊的杰夫·贝佐斯支持)，而另一端则是一家名为Rocket Lab的小型初创公司(它希望在未来几天内首次进入轨道)。将卫星送入轨道是一项正常的业务，因此，对商业人士来说也是正常的业务。事实上一个富人愿意把钱花在这样一个异想天开的太空项目上，就像去火星一样，这是一个令人感兴趣的旅程，也是衡量一些人变得多么富有的一个好办法。

For now, the world’s private space programmes, whether commercial or quixotic, are mostly American. But the model is spreading. Even China sports nascent rocket firms. The incipient race to Mars will include companies as well as countries. That will make it a better test of economic systems than the original space race ever was.

就目前而言，世界上的私人空间项目，无论是商业的还是不切实际的，大多是美国的。但这种模式正在蔓延。即使是中国也开始了新生的火箭公司。火星的早期竞赛将包括公司和国家。这将使它比以往的太空竞赛更能考验经济系统。

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "In heaven as it is on Earth"