Last week, on the same day the Artemis II mission blasted off for the first human flight around the Moon in more than 50 years, it emerged that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had filed for a record-breaking stock market listing to raise as much as $75bn. The coincidence brought the past and the future of US space exploration into sharp relief: one involves an expensive government programme seeking to rekindle the awe of Apollo-era human space flight, the other an entrepreneur gearing up to tighten his grip on the commercial space economy.
上周,就在执行“阿耳忒弥斯二号”(Artemis II)任务的飞船发射升空、开启50多年来首个载人绕月飞行的同一天,有消息称埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)的SpaceX已递交创纪录的上市申请,拟募资高达750亿美元。这一巧合鲜明对照了美国太空探索的过去与未来:一边是昂贵的政府项目,试图重燃阿波罗时代载人航天的震撼;另一边则是一名企业家正加紧巩固其在商业太空manbetx20客户端下载 中的主导地位。