El Segundo, CaliforniaCNN —

For years, the private sector has envisioned an illustrious future in space — an extraterrestrial playground with tourists flying to and from orbiting hotels and the occasional trip to Mars being as easy as a transatlantic flight.

But if the space economy is to become a $1 trillion sector by 2040, as one Citigroup report suggested, not all of its enterprises will be so grandiose.

One California-based startup, Varda Space Industries, is betting that big business will lie in relatively unassuming satellites that will spend days or months in Earth’s orbit quietly carrying out pharmaceutical development. Its research, company officials hope, could lead to better, more effective drugs — and hefty profits.

“It’s not as sexy a human-interest story as tourism when it comes to commercialization of the cosmos,” said Will Bruey, Varda’s CEO and cofounder. “But the bet that we’re making at Varda is that manufacturing is actually the next big industry that gets commercialized.”