Why Space Companies Are Betting Big on Texas

- For most of space flight history NASA and government, or nation states, were really the biggest players in charge.

That has recently shifted. - This was a frontier we really believed, for a long time, it was only a place for governments to build and innovate.

- What we're seeing is a democratized space sector with a lot of smaller players and a lot of larger commercial players as well.

- With the global space economy currently valued at over $650 billion, one American state in particular is betting big on this rapidly growing sector.

- Governor Abbott coming to you from the great state of Texas. Texas is a really good snapshot of the new direction that the space industry is taking.

- There's a huge space community that's just embedded in Texas. - From a NASA standpoint, because of that competition, they're lowering the overall costs.

That allows us to be able to do more. - 3, 2, 1, and lift off.

- This is where we do the majority of all of our rocket testing, engine testing, component level testing, 200 acres of a factory floor and engine test, hand machine shop.

- Firefly Aerospace is one of many commercial space companies that has set up in Texas. It's valued in the billions of dollars, thanks to a string of extraordinary technical achievements in recent years.

In March 2025, it became the first commercial space company to land upright on the Moon. - It was a 45 day transit from Earth to the Moon, and we had 10 NASA payloads on board doing all kinds of scientific experiments that I think really took us to the next level.

- Firefly has secured multiple contracts with NASA worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has recently expanded its manufacturing and rocket testing facilities just outside of Austin.

Making sure that we keep all of this manufacturing in-house and in Texas is one of the key areas that allows us to be really scalable and kind of dominant in this industry.