Twenty years ago this month, I was privileged to help start NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) initiative.  It was a huge innovation for NASA to try a commercial approach to meet a mission need.  COTS was successfully used on Commercial Cargo and has been used repeatedly since.   This post gives a brief overview of COTS, its foundations, applications, achievements, and future prospects.

The COTS Model

The “COTS Model” means a two-phase approach to fulfill a government need:

Phase 1 – Investment (financial, technical, or both) to help industry develop capabilities that may furnish services in the future to NASA and others

Phase 2 – If phase 1 is successful, a purchase of services (or data) from industry to meet a NASA mission need.

By using this approach, NASA (or other government agencies) can achieve their mission at potentially much lower cost by sharing that cost with other customers.   This has been proven on Commercial Cargo, where a relatively small investment by NASA in SpaceX development of Falcon 9 and Dragon led to a massive commercial success, enabling further developments to lower cost and increase access to space.  Indeed, NASA’s COTS investment has changed space forever.