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The billionaire space race is only a race by name
亿万富翁太空竞赛只是一种名义上的竞赛
There is more innovation happening in the commercial space sector today than at any time in history and the launch services sector is particularly competitive. Relativity Space is building the world’s first 3D-printed rocket and plans to build rockets on Mars with robots. Virgin Orbit is putting satellites into orbit by launching a rocket from beneath the wing of a jumbo jet. Its sister company, Virgin Galactic, is flying people to the edge of space from an air-launched space plane. RocketLab has developed the first rocket engine fed with an electric pump and is trying to catch it out of the air with a net connected to a helicopter.
如今商业太空领域的创新比以往任何时候都多，发射服务领域的竞争尤其激烈。相对论太空公司正在建造世界上第一枚3D打印火箭，并计划用机器人在火星上建造火箭。维珍轨道公司正通过从大型喷气式飞机机翼下发射火箭，将卫星送入轨道。它的姊妹公司维珍银河正在用空中发射的太空飞机将人类送往太空边缘。RocketLab已经开发出第一款电动泵驱动的火箭发动机，并试图用一个连接到直升机的网将其从空中接住。
And then there’s Blue Origin, which dominated world headlines for days this week with its launch of the Star Trek actor William Shatner – briefly – into space. If there were any rocket company expected to be at a comparable level of technological achievement to SpaceX, it is Blue Origin. The company was founded by the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2000, just two years before SpaceX set up shop in California.
还有蓝色起源，本周因《星际迷航》演员威廉·夏特纳短暂进入太空而占据了世界新闻头条。如果有哪家火箭公司有望在技术成就上达到与SpaceX相当的水平，那一定是蓝色起源。该公司由亚马逊前首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯于2000年创立，就在SpaceX在加利福尼亚州建厂的两年前。
In 2015, Blue Origin became the first company to send a rocket above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and land it again. While this is not as challenging as bringing a rocket back from orbit – as Musk has taunted Bezos in the past – it was still a major milestone in the history of private space exploration. And unlike Musk, Bezos actually knows what it’s like to ride on his own rocket.
2015年，蓝色起源成为第一家将火箭发射到Kármán线（国际公认的太空边界）上方并再次着陆的公司。虽然这并不像马斯克过去嘲笑贝佐斯那样从轨道上带回火箭那样具有挑战性，但这仍然是私人太空探索历史上的一个重要里程碑。与马斯克不同的是，贝佐斯实际上知道乘坐自己的火箭是什么感觉。
