The financial backers of these companies -- Elon Musk of SpaceX or Blue Origin's (and Amazon's) Jeff Bezos -- have invested hundreds of millions of dollars of their own fortunes.

CNN: Private space travel: A new era begins?

Other projects include Blue Origin, a start-up run by Amazon.com Inc.

WSJ: SpaceX's Pioneering Flight Plans

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has wrapped his Blue Origin operation in secrecy, but the pictures on his Web site suggest he's spending millions.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Amazon.com co-founder and CEO Bezos is bankrolling Blue Origin , which aims to design and build small suborbital vehicles.

FORBES: The New Space Race

Virgin's Richard Branson has started Virgin Galactic in an attempt to sell suborbital trips to ordinary citizens, and Amazon.com 's JeffBezosJeff Bezos has started a company called Blue Origin to create a private suborbital space vehicle.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is developing a suborbital vehicle at his company Blue Origin.

FORBES: Magazine Article

You can zoom in and out and click on the blue points to find out more about each deployment (including iPads as well as Samsung and Amazon Kindle Fire tablets), including the original news reference or web link.

FORBES: Map: Back-To-School Drives 100+ Huge iPad & Tablet Deployments

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has always been incredibly secretive about his own space investment, a company called Blue Origin based near Seattle but with a rocket launch facility out in the wilds of west Texas.

FORBES: Billionaire Space Race: 2012 Will Be The Year Private Space Transport Takes Off