Commercial Orbital Transportation Services
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) was a NASA program to spur the development of private spacecraft and launch vehicles for deliveries to the International Space Station (ISS).
While the approach has significantly lowered costs for NASA, companies other than SpaceX have struggled under the fixed-price system, with some refusing to bid and others experiencing large losses on contracts.
Unlike any previous NASA project, the proposed spacecraft were intended to be owned and financed primarily by the companies themselves and were designed to serve both U.S. government agencies and commercial customers.
After years of keeping orbital transport for human spaceflight in-house, NASA concluded that firms in a free market could develop and operate such a system more efficiently and affordably than a government bureaucracy.
[5] The then NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin stated that without affordable Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), the agency will not have enough funds remaining to achieve the objectives of the Vision for Space Exploration.
[7] The NASA Administrator has suggested that space transportation services procurement may be expanded to orbital fuel depots and lunar surface deliveries should the first phase of COTS prove successful.
[8] On 22 May 2012, Bill Gerstenmaier confirmed that NASA was no longer purchasing any cargo resupply services from Russia and would rely solely on the American CRS vehicles, the SpaceX Dragon and Orbital Sciences' Cygnus; with the exception of a few vehicle-specific payloads delivered on the European ATV and the Japanese HTV.
[12][13] On 18 August 2006, NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) announced that SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler won Phase I of the COTS program.
By 18 June 2007, NASA had signed separate non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements with three additional firms, Constellation Services International (CSI), SpaceDev and Spacehab.
[22] In January 2008 industry sources claimed that the field had been downselected to four; Spacehab, Andrews Space, PlanetSpace and Orbital Sciences, with the announcement date set to 7 February.
[25] NASA's selection statement showed that Orbital beat Boeing on expected lower costs and the added benefit of a new medium lift launcher Taurus II with Andrews, PlanetSpace and Spacehab being eliminated on funding concerns.
