The US Air Force recently awarded a $500 million contract to Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin. The funds will directly impact Blue Origin's latest rocket, New Glenn. Blue Origin and Amazon (AMZN  ) founder Jeff Bezos noted that the new vehicle will be able to carry satellites (weighing up to 50 tons) to the earth's orbit, with hopes of carrying humans into space. Likewise, New Glenn boasts a reusable booster, which will allow parts of the rocket to be recovered for future use. In doing so, Blue Origin will be able to save its funds for more rocket launches overtime. With plans to test New Glenn within the next two years, Blue Origin is actively competing with other space companies that also desire to supervise successful launches for national security purposes. The possibility of overseeing the travel of space parts (and potentially humans) will help Blue Origin be considered for future commercial and government grants.

The grant from the Air Force to various companies is a result of discussions regarding the safe launch and performance of satellites for navigation and communication by the US armed forces. The other two companies that have received a grant from the US Air Force are Virginia-based Northrop Grumman (NOC  ) and United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing (BA  ) and Lockheed Martin (LMT  ), of $792 million and $967 million, respectively. According to an announcement by ULA, ULA's rocket Vulcan and New Glenn will also use the same engine: Blue Origin's BE-4 liquid rocket engine. Although both companies plan to share similar supply parts, it is not yet clear whether the sharing of parts will significantly contribute to pre-existing competition between ULA and Blue Origin. According to reports, such competition led to months of negotiations between the two companies.

Elon Musk's Space X, which sued the US Air Force in 2015 on grounds of military launch monopolization by the ULA, did not receive the award. Air Force assistant secretary Will Roper asserted that "SpaceX is a valuable part of [their] launch team" and that SpaceX has "multiple launches coming up in the future, and the Air Force is interested and has the door open to work with them on certification if they want to pursue that with us."

Until then, Blue Origin does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Blue Origin executives have stated plans to build a new launch site at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. There has not been any confirmation regarding whether New Glenn, or any other Blue rocket will launch from there.