Yet while this is an industry waiting to take off, until the Federal Aviation Administration sorts out the rules of the air for unmanned vehicles it will remain idling on the runway, because for now commercial flights are banned. Congress has asked the FAA to write regulations governing civil operation of small unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace by 2015. It’s not clear whether the agency will meet that deadline or not. “There’s just too much uncertainty,” said Phil Finnegan, director of corporate analysis at the Teal Group, which monitors the aerospace industry. “There will be applications when the FAA opens up the airspace. The first one will be law enforcement, then civilian. But for now, they cannot fly freely in airspace.”

“The two companies I think are extremely well-positioned for the future are Arianespace and SpaceX,” says Marco Caceres, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group. “They are the ones who are the most diversified and have the best pricing.” SpaceX offers $160 million launches, about $100 million less than those of Arianespace and ULA.

Boeing said on Monday it can move “really fast” to get the Dreamliner back into the skies once the FAA approves the fix. But the FAA faces unusually tough obstacles in approving it for flight – one of them brought on by the agency’s own boss. LaHood promised early in the crisis that the Dreamliner would not resume flying until regulators were “1,000 percent sure” of its safety. As no aircraft is 100 percent safe “it is going to be a challenge for the FAA to dial back from some of the overheated rhetoric,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group in Virginia. Aboulafia estimated it would take at least four months for the 787 to be cleared to fly if the FAA approves flight tests soon. If flight testing approval takes longer, it could take 6-9 months before the 787 is back in the air.

Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the FAA's announcement a good first step. "It's a smart start to this to use the test phase to also test what works best to protect privacy," he said. The U.S. still needs to regulate drone use by law enforcement, Calabrese said. The global market for drones will grow to $11.4 billion in 2022 from $6.6 billion this year, according to Teal Group Corp. of Fairfax, Virginia, which analyzes the industry. Major drone makers include Northrop Grumman Corp., General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., and Aerovironment Inc., which make most sales to the U.S. military, said Steve Zaloga, a Teal Group analyst.

To understand why, you need to go back to 1997, when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. Technically, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. But, as Richard Aboulafia, a noted industry analyst with the Teal Group, told me, "McDonnell Douglas in effect acquired Boeing with Boeing's money." McDonnell Douglas executives became key players in the new company, and the McDonnell Douglas culture, averse to risk and obsessed with cost-cutting, weakened Boeing's historical commitment to making big investments in new products. Aboulafia says, "After the merger, there was a real battle over the future of the company, between the engineers and the finance and sales guys." The nerds may have been running the show in Silicon Valley, but at Boeing they were increasingly marginalized by the bean counters.