SpaceX, the upstart company, and NASA, the government agency, both have plans to venture to Mars and orbit the moon. But that doesn’t mean they’ve launched a new space race.

In fact, NASA has long been SpaceX’s most important customer, providing contracts to deliver cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station. And the Hawthorne company will need NASA’s technical support to achieve the first of its grand ambitions in deep space.

A major milestone for the partnership came in 2012 when SpaceX launched its first NASA cargo load, making it the first private company to send a spacecraft to the space station.

Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group, said the NASA supply missions gave SpaceX “almost instant credibility."

"Having NASA as an anchor client allowed them to have enough revenue flow so that they could establish themselves and eventually diversify and get some commercial contracts and eventually to be able to get into the military establishment,” he said.

Today, SpaceX and Boeing Co. are developing separate crew capsules as part of NASA contracts to transport astronauts to the space station.

SpaceX noted that this NASA program provided most of the funding to develop the Dragon 2 spacecraft, which will make the moon trip. It is planning to conduct the first test flight of the Dragon crew capsule in November, followed by a flight test with humans in May 2018.

Marco Caceres, an analyst with the Teal Group, says there is a strong business case for ULA to retire the Delta IV, as the cost for keeping two redundant lines is significant. But he also acknowledged that there is a smart political angle at work. "If they were to cancel the Delta IV medium and all they have is the Atlas V, then there is a better argument to be made for preserving the RD-180 shipments," Caceres said. "No question about that. Have they thought about it? I'm sure people at ULA have considered it as a good strategic move."

But, Caceres said, there are many practical reasons for ULA to move away from the Delta IV, a largely redundant and expensive capacity. He notes that part of the reason Bruno was brought in to lead ULA last summer was to streamline the company in the face of SpaceX's competition. "If the Air Force wants ULA to be more competitive on price, it has to become leaner, and it can't do that with two redundant systems," Caceres said.

"I don't see how Orbital, given all the negative publicity around Russian engines, could go with another Russian engine," says Marco Caceres, space industry analyst for aerospace and defense consultancy Teal Group. "How could the CEO explain another accident to shareholders? I think you have to go with a red, white, and blue company."

But finding that company could prove daunting. Aerojet Rocketdyne's existing production line produces powerful engines for the Delta IV and NASA's new super-heavy-lifting Space Launch System—likely too much engine for Orbital's medium-sized Antares rocket, Caceres says. 

The agency doesn't yet have a rocket powerful enough to blast it into space that is also deemed safe enough to transport people. "It's kind of like sitting in a beautiful Cadillac, without an engine or tires," said Marco Caceres, director of space studies for Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant.