Although Blue Origin has yet to fly people, the company has taken what it's learned from its space tourism program and applied it to a variety of ambitious spaceflight endeavors: Developing a powerful yet reusable rocket engine, building a massive new rocket and leadingLockheed Martin joined Blue Origin's lunar lander initiative and has also been building the Orion capsules for NASA's deep space missions.
Boeing, like SpaceX, is developing a capsule to fly NASA astronauts to the space station. Boeing will get as much as $4.2 billion from NASA to build the spacecraft,, to end the United States' dependence on flying with Russia to get people to orbit. Additionally, Boeing is the prime contractor for NASA's Space Launch System, or SLS, an immense rocket intended to send astronauts to the moon and more.
Lastly is NanoRacks, a private company that focuses on a variety of human spaceflight opportunities ranging from research to space station habitats. NanoRacks has a wide swath of customers as well, ranging from NASA to the European Space Agency to a number of private U.S. companies.While human spaceflight may be the most esteemed part of the industry, building and launching spacecraft for the U.S. military has long been a consistent line of business for many defense companies.
"A lot of them are getting maybe between 5% and 20% or so of their revenues from space-related activities," said Andrew Chanin, co-founder and CEO of Procure AM, a firm that earlier this yearAerojet Rocketdyne focuses on propulsion systems for a variety of military and commercial rockets and spacecraft. The company's stock has had a solid year, up more than 25% on the back of continued sales growth of its rocket engines.