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.

"If Google is committing money to SpaceX, they are likely to be a major investor and a real partner," said Marco Caceres, director of space studies at consultant Teal Group. "Google brings the applications for the satellites to the table, and SpaceX has the technical know-how and the launch capacity."

Taking that as a guide, VG would need to be, at least, a $2 billion program. But can any company afford to do private space safely? Marco Caceres, a space-industry analyst at Teal Group, named one contender: SpaceX. Founder Elon Musk's company is positioned for success because it's financing its development with commercial and government clients, not celebrities. "That sort of funding won't come from a few hundred adventure seekers," Caceres says. "It's going to take big-time investment."

"They're getting the reputation for being a pretty gutsy company that's willing to get things done," Marco Caceres, director of space studies with Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant, said in a Jan. 10 phone interview.